The growing trend of employee ownership has emerged as a major theme in Scottish business in recent years. Stories of company owners transferring shareholdings into employee ownership trusts to safeguard the future of their businesses have become commonplace, to the extent there are now 182 employee-owned concerns in Scotland, with that number expected to reach 200 in the first half of the year.
But not every firm which makes this move has the history and intrigue of the latest one to make the leap.
READ MORE: Humza Yousaf New Deal for Scottish business on ropes
Keppie, the historic Glasgow architecture firm, is likely to forever hold a place in the city’s cultural life thanks to its association with Charles Rennie Mackintosh. It was while working as a partner at Keppie that Mackintosh designed Glasgow School of Art, perhaps his most famous commission.
Keppie has in the 170 years-plus go on to work on a number of other prominent buildings, including the brutalist Glasgow Sheriff Court, which opened in 1986, and is continuing to develop high-profile projects to this day.
In a statement today, shareholders Peter Moran, Fraser Low, Richard MacDonald and David Ross, who staged a management buyout of the firm in 2018, said “huge personal investment” from Keppie’s staff had “driven the special culture and hard-earned reputation” the firm enjoys. As they assessed options to safeguard the future of the practice, they reached the conclusion that placing its ownership into employee hands offered the best chance to preserve those qualities.
READ MORE: Chivas Brothers boss is appointed chair of SWA
“The outstanding loyalty and contribution of Keppie employees over the years has earned our practice the reputation it has today,” said Mr Moran, Keppie’s managing director. “We believe that the best people to own the future of Keppie are the people who know it best – our present and future employees.”
He added: “The EOT (employee ownership trust) will provide a platform for our business to grow, with a commitment to continual professional and personal improvement and innovation to ensure Keppie maintains its position as a market leader.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here