Holding companies are becoming an increasingly important part of the employee ownership landscape, creating a pathway to acquire and grow businesses while extending employee ownership across a portfolio.

EO holding companies offer a potentially powerful model for scale. Rather than building the capital, governance and ownership structure anew for each individual business transition, a holding company can create a repeatable platform for acquiring companies, providing long-term stewardship and extending the benefits of ownership to more workers over time. For business owners, the model can offer an alternative succession path and a permanent home for their companies. For investors, it creates opportunities to invest in a platform capable of deploying capital across multiple acquisitions.

But EO holdcos aren’t all built the same. Their ownership structures, sources of capital, investment horizons, acquisition strategies and approaches to sharing ownership with employees can look quite different.

In this EO Spotlight, we’ll explore this emerging segment of the market through three different perspectives. Chris Fredericks of Empowered Ventures will frame the EO holding company landscape, why these models are gaining momentum, and some of the different ways they can be structured, drawing on Empowered Ventures’ experience as an ESOP-owned holding company.

We’ll then hear from Matt Bergheiser, Founder & CEO of Celsius Companies, and Gary Montes de Oca, CEO of Outdoor Rec Collective, about the holding companies they are building, their approaches to acquisition and employee ownership, where they are in their development and how investors can participate.