This policy dinner takes place on the evening before Employee Ownership Day 2013 and will discuss growing evidence that the UK’s economy could benefit from more diversity of business ownership structures.
Recent reviews by Professor John Kay and Sir George Cox have identified significant problems with the dominant PLC model. In addition, the Ownership Commission and the Nuttall Review have argued that there are clear benefits to a plurality of firm types, including evidence that economies with a range of business structures – cooperatives, family-owned firms and mutuals, alongside PLCs – may be more resilient to economic shocks.
The Government has set out its commitment to help boost alternative business structures. It is taking forward many of the proposals made in the Nuttall Review and is set to introduce the new employee owner status, announced by George Osborne in Autumn 2012. From March 2014, it will spend £50m on funding capital gains tax relief on the sale of a controlling interest in a business into an employee ownership structure. But it is unclear how far such reforms will succeed in altering the entrenched structure of the UK economy.
This event is kindly supported by John Lewis Partnership