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03 January 2019 / Patrick Allen
Issue: 7822 / Categories: Opinion , Legal services
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What’s mine is yours

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Patrick Allen predicts an uplift in the number of law firms converting to co-ownership

Employee-owned businesses and co-operatives have been around for a long time and are supported by the major political parties. The Labour Party published a report on alternative models of ownership in 2017 and its election manifesto committed to doubling the size of the cooperative sector and encouraging more democratic ownership structures.

The co-ownership sector, while significant, is not large—its annual turnover is estimated at £40bn as of 2017. The John Lewis model is the one that everyone has heard of, but it is not typical for the sector, having 83,000 partners and a turnover of over £10bn. However, the sector is growing following legislation which provides tax incentives for businesses to transform themselves into employee owned-businesses (EOBs) by setting up employee ownership trusts (EOTs).

This came about as a result of an initiative from the coalition government, which commissioned research into employee owned businesses. The Nuttall report, published in 2012, found that firms where employees own a stake

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