ESOP Plus® (ESOP +®) Means Next Generation Employee Ownership.

Whether it’s an ESOP, a Stock Appreciation Rights (SARs), Phantom Stock, an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP), stock options or a worker cooperative (COOP), ESOP Plus® helps you design the employee ownership plan that’s right for you and your business.

For Employee Incentives:

ESOP+® helps you design an employee ownership plan that incentivizes and rewards your employees on the most tax-efficient basis. Employee ownership helps you motivate your workforce to maximize the value of your business for themselves and for you so that their futures and yours are more rewarding and more secure. Employee ownership is the ultimate form of capitalism. It helps mold your entire team into a unified creative force that fuels your business engine and maximizes your competitive advantage.

  • Employee Incentive Tools:
    • Stock Appreciation Rights grant employees the right to appreciation in the company’s shares from the time they are granted until some predefined event like a sale or a public offering of the company shares.
    • Phantom Stock grant employees the right to the value of the company stock at some predetermined time. Unlike Stock Appreciation Rights, Phantom Stock includes the value of the underlying stock, not just the appreciation.
    • An Employee Stock Purchase Plan allows employees to purchase the stock of the employer at a discount from its current market value.
    • Stock Options give the employee the right to purchase employer stock at a price determined on the date of the grant.

No matter which incentive you choose ESOP+® will combine the right incentive package with the most tax and cost-effective plan to achieve your goals.

For Ownership Transition:

ESOP+® means that we will help you assemble all the tools necessary to obtain the value from the sale of your business whether or not you transfer your business to your employees or to another third party. We will help you put together a top-of-class team of cost-effective professional advisors who will work with your accountant, attorney, investment advisor and us to help you examine and evaluate all of the various ways to obtain cash from your business. By doing this, we can help you assure that your management team is strong enough to build your value.

We and the other members of the team can examine the tax consequences of various strategies for selling all or part of your business. We can advise you about maintaining control of your business for as long as you wish, and we can work with your estate planners and investment advisor to make sure that your family has the resources that they need for the future.

  • Ownership Transition Tools:
    • Worker Cooperatives are a way that owners of businesses, particularly small businesses can sell to their employees. Under certain circumstances, the seller can receive substantial tax benefits as a result of the transfer.
    • Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are qualified retirement plans that are allowed to buy the shares of business owners. In addition to the tax benefits available for Worker Cooperatives, employee-owners of ESOP companies are able to shelter the price they pay from current income tax. ESOPs are more complex than Worker Cooperatives. They are scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service and the US Department of Labor, but their tax advantages give participants a better leverage when buying the business.

ESOP+® can help you design the employee incentive and ownership transition plans that are right for you. Call us, or ask your trusted advisor to call us so we can help you and your team explore the options.