Employee Owned Businesses – Access to Funding

Abstract

This report presents findings from a research project concerning access to funding for employee-owned businesses (EOBs) in Scotland. The two main objectives were: first, to examine the role of funding for firms moving into employee ownership - especially to ascertain if this constrains or curtails firms becoming employee-owned. Second, to examine the issue of funding as a constraint on growth for existing employee-owned businesses and to judge whether lending institutions view these firms as ‘atypical’ in terms of their perceived credit risk.