Wisdom Board - PULSE podcast - James “Jim” Steiker, founder and CEO, SES ESOP Strategies

March 10, 2021 R. Adam Smith

PULSE Podcast Series | Episode 05

A highly informative chat with the founder of one of the world’s leading ESOP organizations, James “Jim” Steiker, of SES.

Episode Description:

This episode features the brilliant founder of SES, a leading mission-driven company passionate about ESOPs and optimizing employee ownership. Jim, the founder of SES, is one of the world’s leading experts on ESOPs, a unique form of equity ownership structuring for private companies impacting over 10 million individual employees in the modern-day. Jim discusses his firm’s mission, the unique benefits of an ESOP, on both a relative and absolute basis, and a few war stories to boot. Any owner or board member of a larger private company should be mindful of the ESOP.

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The Wisdom Board PULSE podcast series is a new collection of personal conversations with leading industry leaders, owners, founders, and boards. PULSE delivers enlightening insights from industry veterans’ own leadership journeys. PULSE guests are entrepreneurs, founders, owners, CEOs, Chairmen, philanthropists, as well as investors from private equity, venture, family offices, and institutions.

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James Steiker

Founder and CEO

SES ESOP Strategies

Jim is Chairman of SES ESOP Strategies, a Stevens & Lee/Griffin Platform company. He is a corporate, pension and tax attorney and financial advisor with more than 30 years of experience in ESOPs and other employee ownership matters. He focuses his practice primarily on ESOP design, transactions and compliance in entrepreneurial companies.

Jim has served on the ESOP Association Board of Governors and is a past Chair of the ESOP Association’s Advisory Committee on Finance. He is also a past Trustee of the Employee Ownership Foundation and a former member of the Board of Directors of the National Center for Employee Ownership. He is a director of the Employee Ownership Expansion Network and also serves as a Director of seven ESOP companies.

A frequent author on ESOP matters, Jim has contributed to numerous National Center for Employee Ownership publications, including ESOPs and Corporate Governance, The ESOP Company Board Handbook, Responding to Acquisition Offers in ESOP Companies, Administrative Issues for ESOP Companies, Seller-Financed ESOP Transactions, Warrants in ESOP Transactions and Don’t Do That: Common Mistakes in Operating an ESOP and What to Do About Them. He has also authored articles on ESOPs for many trade journals.

Jim presents regularly on ESOP topics to the annual and regional meetings of the ESOP Association and the National Center for Employee Ownership, ESOP state employee ownership center conferences, and to general and professional audiences. Recent presentations include “LLC Structures and ESOPs,” “The Evolving Fiduciary Process: Practical Guidance for Plan Sponsors and Fiduciaries,” “Selling Your Company to an ESOP,” “Highly-Leveraged ESOP Transactions,” “ESOP Transaction Structures” and “Is an ESOP Right for You.”