Yes. One advantage of the Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) structure is that the transition does not have to happen all at once:
- A trust can own part of the company while the founder, family, or institutional investors retain the rest.
- You can phase the transition, increasing the trust's ownership over time as the company and the owner are ready.
A common point of confusion: ownership percentage is not the same as who participates. If 30% of the company is sold into the trust, that does not mean only 30% of employees are included. The trust holds that 30% stake on behalf of the employee beneficiaries, and who qualifies as a beneficiary is set by the trust's terms (typically a broad group of eligible employees), independent of the size of the stake the trust holds.
The exact eligibility rules, vesting, and how profit-sharing scales with a partial stake are decisions made when the trust is drafted.
This is general information, not legal or tax advice; the specific terms are worth working through with a qualified advisor.