ABSTRACT
Financial markets are built around shared understandings of similarity and difference that inform who gains access and who is excluded. One of the major developments associated with the financialisation of the American political economy during the final quarter of the twentieth century has been the reorientation of the goals of the modern corporation from the realisation of growth to the maximisation of shareholder value. Although in existence since the 1920s, employee stock ownership plans gained new momentum with the passage of the Employment Retirement Income Security Act in 1974. Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, both the principal loan and the interest payments tax had become deductible. Coming up with the idea for an employee buyout fund was one thing. However, selling it to unions and other potential investors was quite something else. The Employee Partnership Fund never came into existence as the labour-friendly financial intermediary that would transform the market for corporate control from within.
