EFES NEWSLETTER - JUNE 2007

Request to the new Member States of the European Union
EFES requests all new Member States to adopt a legislation allowing common employee share plans. Most new Member States have a bad opinion about employee share ownership and they don't have any adapted legislation. This makes things difficult, not only in these countries but in the European Union as a whole, because most new Member States being not interested or even hostile, political interest for employee share ownership fell dramatically also in Brussels !! More information

Russian Employee Ownership Association
An international conference on employee ownership in Russia was held on June 7-8, 2007 in Rostov-on-Don, Capital of South Russia (city of Essenin, Tchekhov, Soljenitsin, etc), being hosted by the Rostov State Economic University. The Conference decided to set up a new Russian Association for Employee Ownership, and EFES will help. More information

Strong differences between European companies
In former issues, we underlined the fact that employee share ownership shows major differences between European companies in the same sector. Let's see how it is in insurance, media, hotels and health services (see column on right side).

Press review
Much new information  about employee ownership in May 2007, with 1.461 articles in this press review (on which 684 about stock options and 223 about workers' cooperatives). We made a selection of  39 remarkable articles in 12 countries: Austria, Barbados, Botswana, Spain, France, India, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, UK, USA, South Africa.
Austria: Employee share ownership is the darling of new Minister of Finance Molterer.
Barbados: The People's Empowerment Party wants more employee share ownership programmes established by corporate Barbados.
Botswana: Government announces that employees would be given an opportunity to own shares in the newly privatised Air Botswana through an Employee Share Ownership Plan.
Spain: Bask Federation of Employee-Owned Companies (ASLE) celebrates its 25th anniversary. Josetxu Hernández assumes that "our companies couldn't be delocalised".
France: New developments in scandals about stock options: "Would stock options be forbidden?" Essilor wants employee share ownership going to 10% of capital and 20% of voting rights to block any hostile takeover. Employee buyouts are multiplying as workers' cooperatives (SCOP).
Italy: Employee shareholders' associations face mergers in the bank sector.
Morocco: New employee share ownership era in Morocco. 
USA: New developments about a possible employee buyout of Chrysler. Trade Unions' attitude got critics. The Chrysler Employee Buyout Committee is also considering filing a lawsuit against pending sale to Cerberus Capital Management. On the other hand, ESOPs fever is spreading as an increasingly popular option to do leveraged buyouts; in this context "employee-owners need a say to succeed". Finally, Publix Super Markets (31% employee-owned) are "the opposite of Wal-Mart".
South Africa: "Through privatisation and employee ownership, we can make black empowerment (BEE) truly broad-based".

The press review is available on:
              http://www.efesonline.org/PRESS REVIEW/2007/May.htm 

With best regards

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