Swarfcast

Swarfcast


Best of Swarfcast Ep. 31 – Ken Mandile, Employees Are Buying His Business

March 08, 2019

We’re currently working on fresh new episodes of Swarfcast. In the meantime, we felt this “Best of” was fitting for the recent season on CNC Swiss machining. 
In March of 2019, we interviewed Ken Mandile, founder of Swissturn, a successful CNC Swiss machine shop in Oxford, Massachusetts. Ken’s children are not interested in taking over Swissturn when he eventually retires, so five years ago Ken began restructuring his company into an employee stock ownership plan or ESOP, in which he will gradually transfer ownership and management to his employees.

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Main Points

Before going the ESOP route Ken turned down two lucrative buyout offers from private equity firms. Ken reported that after the first year of restructuring as an ESOP, the value of the company increased by 51%.
Question: Would you want to work at an employee-owned business?