My heartiest and heartfelt congratulations to Clif Bar & Firm and its workers on their landmark settlement to promote to Mondelēz Worldwide! The pure vitality, diet and snack bar maker – 20% owned by its workers – bought itself for $2.9 billion, with extra earnout potentialities.
Clif Bar and Gary Erickson and Equipment Crawford, its husband-and-wife house owners and co-Chief Visionary Officers, have been our pals for over a dozen years. I used to be privileged to work with Clif Bar after they established a 20% ESOP plan in Spring 2010 by the sale of family-owned widespread inventory and have maintained ties ever since.
The anticipated acquisition of Clif Bar and different main employee-ownership developments persuade me that my assertion over a yr in the past is materializing that this this can be “The Decade of the ESOP.”
For the reason that coronavirus pandemic started, now we have seen an increase in worker possession. This has been buoyed by PE companies, led by international funding large KKR & CO, and Lengthy Level Capital, amongst others, utilizing a broad-based worker engagement mannequin that, for KKR particularly, seeks to make each employee in a U.S. producer it acquires a participant within the success of the corporate they work for.
We’re seeing a rising variety of states establishing state ESOP facilities to assist family-owned and different firms safe the advantages of employee-ownership. And final December, after Congress acted to make 100% ESOPs eligible for sole-source follow-on authorities contracts, President Biden signed into regulation the first-ever authorities contracting program to particularly encourage ESOPs. The regulation additionally dedicates funds to enhance training about worker possession. (That Jared Bernstein, a long-time advocate for worker possession, is now a member of the White Home Council of Financial Advisors seemingly helped enact this landmark laws.)
As for Clif Bar, when it introduced the ESOP program, Equipment defined that Gary and he or she “needed to create an organization the place we might wish to work. She added, “Worker possession is yet another method we might run a unique type of enterprise: one which evokes a crew of individuals to make the type of scrumptious, nutritious meals we’d prefer to eat, and that strives for a more healthy, extra sustainable world.”
Cliff Bar’s tradition, values and a basis of 5 distinct aspirations underscore how vital Clif Bar locations worker possession and participation. Its aspirations – involving Folks, Planet, Neighborhood, Enterprise and Model – are convincingly defined and illuminated within the firm’s 2020 annual report, Let’s Transfer the World, that may excite any viewer.
We’re excited for Clif Bar’s worker house owners (whose unique 20% possession suggests a $580 million “reward” from the Mondelez buy) and we can be eagerly watching them write their subsequent chapter on a world platform.
As I’ve asserted earlier than, worker possession affords a “win-win-win.” You get the tradition and engagement – and also you get the ideas and concepts from people who find themselves on the road and dealing. With these particular elements you notice outcomes beforehand unimaginable.
Bravo, Clif Bar! And congratulations Mondelez on securing one other iconic model.