Employee Stock Ownership Programs Worldwide
On January 21, 2021, the federal government passed the draft law to strengthen Germany as a fund location. One of the objectives of the Fondstandortgesetzes is to improve the competitiveness of German companies and especially start-ups for the best skilled workers with their competitors abroad.
In the meantime, there has been a lot of criticism of the measures adopted and, from the point of view of the Bundesrat, which approved the Fondstandortgesetze on May 28, 2021, the measures adopted are not yet sufficient to establish a level playing field for German companies and in particular start-ups with their competitors abroad in the competition for the best skilled workers.
Naturally, we have also looked into the reform that has been initiated and collected our contributions on this special page on employee share ownership. In addition, we wanted to find out from our colleagues abroad how employee share ownership works in their legal systems.
Obviously, something seems to work better in some legal systems if the differences encourage the legislature to act. We are therefore particularly proud to present to you, after a presentation of the reform under the Fondstandortgesetze, a legal comparison to which colleagues from the following countries have contributed:
- Estonia
- Lithuania
- Finland
- Latvia
- China
- France
- Israel
- Austria
- Poland
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- UK
- US
We hope you enjoy reading this report and look forward to supporting you in developing and building your employee share ownership program.