Below you can find the list of 5 largest employee owned businesses in the world. For a detailed coverage of this topic and a more comprehensive list, please take a look at this article.
5. Penmac
Total number of employees in 2019: 28,000
Penmac Staffing is a company established to connect job seekers with employers, and provides specialized services unique to each individual job seeker. The company started from just one office and is now a major corporation with over 28,000 employees. The company became employee owned in 2010 when its owners transferred the ownership to employees with the aforementioned Employee Stock Ownership Plan.
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4. Mondragon
Total number of employees in 2019: 81,507
It is the biggest employee owned company in Spain by number of employees and in terms of revenue, is by far the biggest employee owned company in Europe. The cooperative has 257 companies which employ over 80,000 people and have revenues exceeding 12 billion euros. It is also the tenth biggest Spanish company when turnover is taken into consideration.
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3. John Lewis Partnership
Total number of employees in 2019: 83,000
It is the biggest employee owned company in the UK, and owns John Lewis & Partners department stores, its banking and financial services, Waitrose & Partner Supermarkets and other retail activities as well. It is the third biggest company in the UK which is not traded on the stock exchange and the chain appeals to upper middle class and upper class shoppers. The company was established in 1929 and was founded on Oxford Street in London.
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2. Huawei
Total number of employees in 2019: 194,000
Huawei is a Chinese technology company, and a very controversial pick in our list, which I’ll get to later. Huawei is involved in the designing, development and sales of technology equipment, and is one of the biggest cell phone manufacturers in the world, providing mid range and high end phones to customers. It has a presence in over 170 countries and annual revenue in 2019 increased to over $121 billion. In fact, in July of this year, Huawei actually beat both Samsung and Apple to become the top smartphone company in the world, despite the sanctions it has had to face by Western countries and in light of Samsung’s sales dropping as the Covid-19 pandemic gripped the world.
These sanctions have come about due to accusations of Huawei supporting the state and links to the People’s Liberation Army as well as concerns by Western powers, and especially the United States, that the telecom infrastructure developed by Huawei could allow the Chinese government to spy on these countries. In addition, Huawei has also been accused of helping the Chinese government in detaining and surveilling its Uyghur Muslim population, which has been the primary reason behind the aforementioned sanctions. This has all culminated in the CFO of the company being arrested in Canada, who is currently out on bail.
Even Huawei’s appearance on this list is controversial. While it alleges to be owned completely by employees, the shares are actually held by a trade committee and the governance procedures of this committee, its members, its leaders and the process of selection of these leaders is all hidden and not accessible to anyone outside of the committee, which purports to hold the shares on behalf of the employees. All this has led to the assertion that Huawei employees don’t actually own part of the company but rather get rewarded for the shares they hold when they leave the company, which then revert back to the company. Despite the controversy, we have included Huawei in our list and leave it to the readers to assess based on available facts and figures whether it is or not an employee owned company.
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1. Publix Supermarkets
Total number of employees in 2019: 207,000
Topping the list of the 5 largest employee owned companies in the world is Publix Supermarkets, which is based in the USA. The company is 90 years old and is headquartered in Florida. Throughout the decades, the company has continued to be owned by members of the Jenkin family, who were the founders as well as past and present employees of the company too. The company has over 1,200 locations across the US and is the only employee owned company to have more than 200,000 employees. The company is one of the 100 biggest companies in the US regardless of ownership or industry, and is one of the biggest private companies in the US as well, surpassing most of those which are not owned by employees. Publix had revenues of over $38.1 billion in 2019 with a net income exceeding $3 billion. It is one of the very few companies which have been named in Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For every year since its inception 22 years ago in 1998.
See also: 11 companies with the most employees in US and 15 largest private employers in the world
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