648% up – Employee Ownership Index celebrates 20th birthday on a high
03 July 2012
The Employee Ownership Index
(EOI) celebrated its 20th birthday by ending the
first quarter of 2012 an impressive 648% above its 1992 starting
position.
An investment of £100 in the
EOI when the index began in January 1992 would have risen to £648
by the end of Q1 2012. The same investment in the FTSE
All-Share Index would be worth only £245. In fact, the
companies in the index have outperformed FTSE All-Share companies
by an average of 10% each year since the EOI began.
In the first quarter of 2012,
the EOI rose 6% and fared better than the FTSE All-Share's 5% rise
for the same quarter.
Graeme Nuttall, head of the
Equity Incentives team at Field Fisher Waterhouse, the law firm
which publishes the EOI, and the Government's independent adviser
on employee ownership, says:
"Twenty years on and the
Employee Ownership Index continues to prove what it set out to do,
namely that businesses with substantial employee ownership perform
well over the long term. Indeed, it has exceeded
expectations. We have come a long way over the last 20
years. Employee ownership should be considered now as a
business model in its own right and not simply another way of
paying employees."
For further information, please
contact:
Paul Nugent, PR Executive, Field
Fisher Waterhouse LLP on 020 7861 4526
Louise Eckersley, PR Manager,
Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP on 020 7861 4120
Notes to Editors
The Employee Ownership Index
The EOI tracks the performance of UK-quoted
companies that are over 10% owned by employees (excluding main
board directors) or employee trusts. The EOI is regularly
referred to in national and regional press including The
Independent, The Guardian, The Daily Mail,
The Mail on Sunday, The Scotsman,
Scotland on Sunday and The Yorkshire
Post and has been cited in the Today Programme (BBC
Radio 4) and Newsnight (BBC 2).
The degree of employee share ownership is
determined using the best available information. The UK
Employee Ownership Index does not necessarily include all eligible
listed companies.
Equity Incentives at Field Fisher
Waterhouse
The UK Employee Ownership Index is compiled
quarterly by the Equity Incentives team at law firm Field Fisher
Waterhouse. The team provides employee ownership advice and
solutions for a variety of business structures, including under the
Government’s right to provide and right to request programmes. It
also advises on incentive plans for UK and overseas listed and
private companies and has had detailed and broad ranging input into
Government share plans policy.
Graeme Nuttall
Graeme Nuttall is a partner at European law
firm Field Fisher Waterhouse where he is head of the Tax Practice
and leads the Equity Incentives Group. Graeme is dual
qualified as a solicitor and a chartered tax adviser. He is
recognised as a leading expert on employee share plans with
particular expertise in employee owned businesses.
On 8 February 2012 he was appointed the Government's
independent adviser on employee ownership, a part-time voluntary
role. As a member of the HM Treasury Employee
Ownership Advisory Group, he helped develop the HM Revenue and
Customs approved share incentive plan and enterprise management
incentives arrangement. He also drafted the Employee Share
Scheme Bill, a successful Private Member’s Bill. He is legal
adviser to the Employee Ownership Association, the voice of
co-owned business in the UK. Graeme and others at Field
Fisher Waterhouse contributed to
“How to become an employee owned mutual – an action
checklist for the public sector” (2011) which was
welcomed by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude and the chair of
the Prime Minister’s Mutuals Taskforce, Professor Julian Le Grand,
at its House of Commons launch in March 2011. Graeme has also
helped develop employee ownership in other countries.
Field Fisher Waterhouse
LLP
Field Fisher Waterhouse is a European law firm
providing commercial solutions across a range of industry sectors.
The firm has a particular focus on companies that are highly
regulated and those with intellectual property and technology
driven business models.
The firm has over 150 partners, 240 other
lawyers and nearly 300 support staff across offices in Brussels,
Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Paris, London, Manchester and Munich.
The main areas of practice are corporate, IP,
technology and regulatory law. Field Fisher Waterhouse also
has leading expertise in areas such as banking and finance,
financial services, real estate, dispute resolution, personal
injury and medical negligence. The firm is acknowledged as
leading experts in sectors such as technology and communications,
hotels and leisure and media as well as for our public sector
work.
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