EFES NEWSLETTER - OCTOBER 2012

Employee Ownership Index
Would you like investing in a financial tool if it is not transparent? Hopefully not! The Employee Ownership Index is published in the UK by a law firm in London. It shows that companies in the EO Index outperform FTSE All-Share companies over the long term by an average of 10% each year since the EO Index began (see graph). Not bad!!! Our question to this law firm was: "Which companies belong to the Index?" Here is the answer: "I'm afraid we don't give out the names of companies in the index". Maybe the only stock index in the world whose components are unknown. Would you like to comment on this or ask your own questions, please use this link

Press review
We made a selection of 35 remarkable articles in 8 countries in September 2012: Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, UK, USA.
Austria: Voestalpine will expand its employee shareholding scheme, employees going to hold 14.50% of the steel company.
Canada: Promoting employee buyouts through workers' shareholding cooperatives in Quebec.
China: "We need the ESOP to develop China's socialist market economy", China's central bank Governor said.
France: New employee share plans for Rexel and for Vallourec. Employees hold 23.3% of Bouygues. France is number one for employee ownership in Europe but employee savings could be hardly damaged due to new tax regime. Employee buyouts are multiplying through workers' cooperatives: Some new typical cases. The socialist government will promote employee buyouts through a new specific workers' cooperative scheme.
Germany: Minister of Economy Philipp Rösler calls for better promotion of employee share ownership in Germany. Bilfinger Berger launches an innovative employee share plan for its 65.000 employees.
Italy: Employee shareholders of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena express negative vote.
UK: Employee share ownership can improve the motivation and commitment of employees to their employer, according to research by Loughborough University. It also revealed that nearly 60% of employees felt that participating in a share plan had given them a greater level of knowledge and understanding of how to manage their money. Dr Pushkar Jha expresses the vision that "employee ownership" should be promoted rather than "employee share ownership".
USA: Some new ESOP companies. An ESOP is a special type of retirement plan that purchases stock of the business where the employees work.

The full press review is available on:
              http://www.efesonline.org/PRESS REVIEW/2012/September.htm 

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