Just found out about the co-op group in the UK from reading this article. It seems like they are a member based co-op vs. an employee owned one and it looks like they were shedding their banking division to isolate the loss from the whole financial collapse. It does seem like employee owned companies would do more to preserve their jobs vs. scrap the business for short term profit. So while one could argue that some sort of reform of this would help buffer the pain being inflicted on employees moving towards more egalitarian models of ownership would seem to be a better goal in the long run.