From Make in in LA:

Many new employee ownership advocates and ‘social impact’ investors have emerged to address the risk of job loss caused by the ‘Silver Tsunami’ – aging baby boomers all selling their closely held small businesses at the same time.  They often ask us to share our experience with difficulties we face transitioning company to employee ownership.  Concerned Capital has successfully facilitated the transfer seven companies to their employees and we’re working on 4 of these deals currently. Dozens more are in our pipeline across the country and we’re working with owners and employees to get transactions to work.

We launched our ‘transfer of ownership’ initiative in 2003 after serving as consultant to the Valley Economic Development Center (non-profit lender).  There we developed a ‘transfer of ownership’ initiative designed to mitigate the effects of thousands of business closures following the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.   The federal needed to keep the doors open at hundreds of major employers in the San Fernando Valley following the quake. Aging owners decided it was time to ‘get out’, collect insurance money and close, rather than risk re-starting after this major business disruption. One solution was to transfer ownership to qualified employees.

Get the full story here:

https://makeitinla.org/column/overcoming-obstacles-to-employee-ownership/