BrewDog co-founder James Watt gives £100m shares to staff
BrewDog boss James Watt has revealed plans to give away some £100m of shares, as the drinks firm attempts to move on from accusations of being a toxic workplace.
More than 3.7m shares will be moved to an employee benefit trust while hundreds of workers will be given a stake in the Scottish brewer.
Salaried workers will be offered free stock options over the next four years, from June, with the brewer estimating more than 750 workers will be eligible.
Staff are poised to receive shares worth up to £120,000, according to current valuations.
The news comes as the company marks its 15th anniversary with a new ‘BluePrint’ outlining the company’s future ambitions for “beer, people and the planet.”
What’s more, the brewer said bar staff would receive up to 50 per cent of profit from their BrewDog locations every six months.
“This is about ensuring that we win collectively as a team and fully recognise all the hard work our people contribute to making this business a success,” Watt said.
“We believe that this can help us to create a radical new type of company where employees are genuinely connected to the business. We want to encourage our teams to act and behave like business owners, by rewarding them just like business owners.”
The brewer has faced a slew of bad press over the past year after a coalition of current and former staff members accused the company of perpetuating a toxic workplace culture in summer 2021.
However, the firm has insisted it has implemented a “wide ranging action plan” to tackle issues raised in the open letter, with a major independent review of the firm’s culture.
A recent BBC documentary also looked at accusations from former employees that Watt behaved inappropriately with female staff and customers.
Watt’s lawyer refuted all allegations and said accounts that the entrepreneur had given “unwelcome attention” to a female bartender were “not true” and had been the subject of a full investigation.
Private investigators had been hired by Watt to secure information on individuals he claimed were contributing to a “criminal campaign” of smears.
BrewDog said Watt had been “subjected to a two-year criminal campaign of online harassment, defamation, fraud, blackmail and malicious communications.”
Investigators were hired to find the source of “false allegations” that had been “instigated by a very small group of individuals,” BrewDog told the Guardian newspaper.