banker's bonuses

Employee owned businesses deserve great leaders

Baxendale are delighted to announce the launch of a leadership programme, specifically designed for leaders in employee owned businesses.  This is very much a joint venture with Kellogg College's Centre for Mutual and Employee Owned Business based at Oxford University.  Details of the programme can be found here

Leadership is tremendously important in companies owned by their employees.  Indeed, if you look around the employee-owned community, there is a wealth of excellent leaders; Ali Parsa at Circle Health, Chris Parr at Tullis Russell,

The winning case for employee ownership

The case is closed and the argument that employee ownership is better for business has been won.  That was the message from last night's launch of a new report looking at research to date on employee ownership.  You can read the full report here.

The key findings are that

• Greater employee ownership could bring economic and social benefits to both the private and public sectors in the UK.
• Employee ownership improves employee engagement, innovation, sustainability and productivity

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The Many Forms of Co - Ownership

It is great that co-ownership models are achieving such a high profile at the moment.  There are many reasons behind the attractiveness of the co-owned model for both public and private sectors.  The financial crisis, stemming largely from the fixation with short term rewards at the expense of long term prosperity has created dissatisfaction with the PLC and banking models, which are owned and controlled largely by external shareholders, whose interests are not aligned with the other business stakeholders.  In many areas of the public sector, morale is low because of perceived unfairness, inad

Employee Ownership: better for business, individuals and society.

Why pursuit of shareholder value is bad for business, for individuals and for society.

Why employee owned businesses are better equipped to cope with recession

I attended a very interesting and stimulating event today which was arranged jointly by the Employee Ownership Association and John Lewis Partnership.  The line up of speakers was impressive - Will Davies (Reinventing the Firm), Richard Wilkinson (Spirit Level)  , Philip Blond (Respublica), Charlie Mayfield (Chairman John Lewis) Prof Joseph Lampel (CASS business school) and John Kay (Financial Times).  The purpose of the event was the launch of a new report by CASS Business School which examined the growth of employee owned firms.  More of that later when I get a chance to digest the report an

The people's manifesto - a humourous look from Mark Thomas

As the expenses scandal grinds on, confidence in our politicians is at an all time low.   There seems to be a gaping chasm between our elected representatives and those they represent.  Is it time for the citizens to have a voice?

Fair remuneration; the dilemma for business.

The debate over bankers' bonuses rages on, and the fury over the seeming unfairness does not wane.  It's easy to see why the public are outraged.  Organisations who performed so badly they needed public funds to keep going, are now arguing they need to reward senior executives with substantial bonuses or they will lose them.  It's difficult to understand, if these individuals contributed to this mess, then why should they be "rewarded"?  I do have a lot of sympathy for the vast majority of bank workers.  Banking was never a well paid industry except in the most senior ranks , and the bonuses (

Britain adopts the John Lewis model? Employee ownership moves up the agenda

I have been very critical in the past of the  political cross-party support for employee ownership which hasn't translated past the verbal into real action.   However, the news that the government will announce later today the establishment of an independent commission on ownership is a sign that this is changing.  This is an important development that will consider the effects of ownership on both the public and corporate sector.  It really is great news at the end of a year when interest in employee ownership has grown significantly.  Indeed, the fact that this Commission has recieved signif

Lib Dems, where is your support for employee ownership?

The next election will be fought over the economy according to Vince Cable at this weeks Lib Dem conference.

Who pays?

With the news that bailed out RBS are paying £7m as a “golden hello” to lure a superstar banker into the company, and in the US the government subsidised banks present their remuneration plans to President Obama’s new pay czar,  we have the executive remuneration debate raging on both sides of the Atlantic. Here, the financial services industry regulator, the FSA, charged with reining in disproportionate bonuses, is being accused of watering down their proposals, producing discretionary “guidelines” rather than “rules”.