VISTA to Change Company Ownership Structure

VISTA has decided to institute a corporate Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) as a key component of the Company’s equity structure. The decision is part of the company’s continuing efforts to be a great place to work, while at the same time pursuing a strategy of sound succession planning and recognizing the efforts of employees who will be VISTA’s future leaders.

An ESOP is an employee benefit plan that makes the employees of a company owners of stock in that company. As compared to other types of benefit plans, ESOPs are specifically designed to provide employees with a meaningful financial stake in the securities of the sponsoring employer. An ESOP also is unique among qualified employee benefit plans in its ability to borrow money.

The decision to create the ESOP was made by the company’s current owners, in consultation with executive management and outside advisors, as a means of ensuring the best possible financial and leadership position for the company, now and in the future. In so doing, VISTA is following the lead of some of the best performing companies in America where every employee has something in common with an entrepreneurial business founder—equity.

“We want our employees to think and act like entrepreneurs and owners, and what better way to do that than to make our employees owners?” said VISTA President and CEO David Baxa. “This company is more than the sum of its parts, more than just the experience of the current leadership. We know that even our youngest employees have the potential for strong, capable leadership of the business in the future.”

“This is our way of recognizing that potential, of giving our employees a stake in VISTA’s on-going success, and of enabling our future leaders to benefit from our confidence in them,” Baxa said.