The Incentive Effects Of Employee Stock Ownership Plans In State-owned Enterprises

The employee stock ownership plan(ESOP)is a major measure to deepen the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises(SOEs),and is an important way to achieve the formation of a vested community of capital owners and workers.As the first batch of SOEs that implement ESOP,the ESOP of Shanghai International Port Group(SIPG)is extremely representative due to its most employees involved(16,000),maximum subscription amount(1.7 billion yuan)and the earliest lifting of the ban(June,2018).so investigating the scheme design and incentive effect of SIPG's ESOP has practical significance and reference value for clarifying and solving some related doubts,exploring the experiences and models that can be copied or learned,and promoting the follow-up of the ESOPs in SOEs.The thesis sorts out the domestic and foreign research results and theories of the ESOPs,analyzes the motivation,implementation process and program design of SIPG's ESOP,comprehensively examines its announcement effect as well as long-term incentive effect on employees and enterprise's performance,summarizes research conclusions,policy implications and puts forward subsequent topics of this thesis.The main ideas of this thesis are as follows:1.National policy orientation,industry transformation and own financing needs have led to the implementation of SIPG's ESOP.In order to prevent the loss of state-owned assets,SIPG adopt the incremental issuance model to implement ESOPs,which experiences the feasibility study,internal resolution,external approval,stock issuance and subscription.SIPG's ESOP is active and cautious overall,and achieves the dual purpose of motivating employees and maintaining and increasing the value of state-owned assets.2.The ESOP of SIPG achieved a positive and apparent market response in the short term.It released positive signals to the market,making the stock price trend of SIPG rising significantly,and stock liquidity and market activity increasing.The announcement effect of the ESOP of SIPG was positive and significant under the verification of Event Study.All of this reflects the capital markets' high level of recognition and participation of SIPG's ESOP,as well as the mixed ownership reform of SOEs.3.The ESOP of SIPG has produced a good incentive effect because of the win-win situation for employees and enterprises.It enhances the employees' sense of belonging and cohesiveness to SIPG,and alleviates the brain drain phenomenon of SIPG;it encourages employees to pay attention to market value changes and business performance,which significantly improves the employees' income level and their contribution to SIPG;it has a positive impact on optimizing corporate equity structure and improving business performance,and the long-term incentive effect is particularly significant.4.The incentive effect of the ESOPs on SOEs should be further stimulated.SOEs could learn from the pilot and practical experience of SIPG,increase the proportion of employees' shareholding,enrich the source of funds,establish and improve the transfer and exit mechanism of employee equity,and appropriately set up reserved shares.Government departments should improve laws and regulations about ESOPs,strengthen supervision and management,and steadily promote the long-term and normalization of SOEs' ESOPs.The thesis attempts to examine the incentive effect of SIPG's ESOP from different perspectives,which enriches the practical case study of SOEs' ESOPs.However,due to the objective fact that the incentive effect is difficult to quantify and the relevant data cannot be obtained,the long-term incentive effect of SOEs' ESOPs needs to be further and comprehensively explored.The future study will followed up and focus on these topics and issues.