Employee ownership Why the Entertainer chose an EOT
Employee ownership
While Covid-19 may have been the trigger for the sale process, Duncan says that the outcome – 100% exit to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) – would have been the same. “Once we had decided on a sale of the business it was really about deciding the sort of exit we wanted. As a private family business, a public sale to the markets or private equity didn’t feel like the right thing to do.” The reason the sale process then took almost five years to complete was simply that the family didn’t know much about employee ownership.
There are close to 2,500 employee-owned businesses in the UK. Arguably the most high-profile is the John Lewis Partnership, but other well-known retailers that are partly employee-owned include Lush and Richer Sounds. Very simply, an employee-owned business is one in which employees hold a “significant and meaningful” stake that combines both financial participation with a say in how the company is run.
Martin Greig spoke to Duncan Grant
In August 2025, one of Britain’s best- known brands and successful family businesses was sold. TEAL Group Holdings, the company behind The Entertainer and Early Learning Centre, handed control of the business to its staff. It was one of the most high- profile exits to employee ownership in years. The announcement took the family business community, and the business media, by surprise. But, like any successful family business succession, the deal had been years in the making. For TEAL Group, the process began around the time of the Covid-19 Pandemic. “Like a lot of people, the Pandemic made us think about our priorities and the choices we wanted to make,” says Duncan Grant, formerly Deputy Chair of TEAL Group Holdings and now a director of the new Trust board that owns the business. “It also made us acutely aware of the responsibility we had to our employees, of owning and running a retail business.”
The Grant family. From left, Stuart, founders Gary and Catherine, and Duncan
FBUK Issue 7 14
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