ACCORD Associate, Peter Gates of The Mercury Centre Co-operative has announced that employee ownership specialist Alan Greig (known to many at ACCORD) will be joining the team at Mercury as Director, Ownership Strategies.

"The expanded expertise at the Mercury Centre will mean that co-operative or employee-owned organisations can ask us for help in understanding the often difficult issues they face, and to plan long-term development strategies." Peter Gates

The formal expansion into the ownership area is a natural extension of Mercury's role in corporate governance and as a co-operative developer, and will open up new opportunities for mutual ventures. Peter said, "One of the natural outcomes of consideration of the many facets of ownership is to look at the power of collective ownership through mutual solutions."

Alan's role at Mercury will be to help facilitate ownership change transactions and provide its expertise towards avoiding common implementation mistakes. "The expanded expertise at the Mercury Centre will mean that co-operative or employee-owned organisations can ask us for help in understanding the often difficult issues they face, and to plan long-term development strategies." he explained.

The Mercury Centre focuses on those organisations and individuals that have traditionally not had access to appropriate business skills and practices or quality business support - particularly those in the social enterprise and co-operative sectors and in regional Australia. The Mercury Centre believes that it can help build better communities by supporting and growing values based enterprises.

For further information on co-operative ownership strategies, contact Alan Greig, Director, Ownership Strategies at alan.greig@mercury.org.au and see the web-site of The Mercury Centre at www.mercury.org.au.