Latest news with #Grassi
Forbes
12-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Employee Ownership Is Transforming Business Sustainability
In today's dynamic business landscape, succession planning is no longer optional but a strategic imperative. As private equity investments surge and talent shortages persist, traditional exit strategies such as mergers or acquisitions often come with significant disruption. Many businesses, particularly in professional services, face the challenge of preserving their culture, maintaining service quality, and sustaining growth during leadership transitions. Against this backdrop, Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) offer a compelling, often underutilized alternative. Our firm's decision to transition to an ESOP has provided stability, independence, and a model for sustainable success that directly benefits clients, employees, and communities. Lou Grassi Addressing Grassi's Employee-Owners at the Firm's Annual Gathering in 2024 Unlike traditional sales to external entities, ESOPs transfer ownership to employees over time, aligning personal success with the business's long-term performance. This model significantly enhances employee engagement, as team members directly share in the company's growth and profitability. At our firm, adopting an ESOP structure led to measurable increases in productivity and lower turnover rates. The employee-ownership mindset ensures our staff are not merely employees but invested stakeholders, deeply committed to the success of our clients and the organization. Having advised approximately 35 ESOP companies, we have seen that employee-owned businesses consistently outperform their peers on key metrics such as retention, profitability, and resilience. One of the most significant challenges in any succession plan is preserving a company's operational continuity and core values. ESOPs offer a structured, gradual transition that minimizes disruption, preserves institutional knowledge, and maintains client relationships. Our decision to implement an ESOP stemmed from our unwavering commitment to independence, culture, and consistent client service. In contrast to private equity models, which often involve ownership changes every few years, ESOPs provide enduring stability. For our clients, this means continuity of service, depth of expertise, and a long-term partnership with advisors who are genuinely invested in their success. The financial structure of an ESOP provides distinct advantages to sellers and employees. Sellers can potentially defer capital gains taxes by reinvesting proceeds into qualified replacement property, a benefit unavailable in most private equity transactions. The business can deduct contributions made to fund the ESOP's debt repayment, enhancing overall cash flow and strengthening balance sheets. These savings create opportunities for reinvestment into technology, talent development, and client service enhancements. For employees, participation in an ESOP typically results in significantly higher retirement savings compared to peers in non-ESOP firms. In our case, the financial flexibility created by the ESOP has enabled strategic investments that keep us competitive and client-focused. Amid ongoing challenges in talent acquisition—highlighted by a 7.4% decline in accounting graduates reported by the AICPA—the ESOP model has become a powerful recruitment and retention tool. Offering meaningful ownership stakes without requiring financial buy-ins gives employees a direct path to wealth-building and career advancement. In our experience, the tangible sense of ownership has fostered a culture of collaboration, accountability, and innovation. Employee-owners think and act like business partners, resulting in higher client satisfaction, reduced turnover, and stronger team cohesion. For organizations facing generational talent gaps, ESOPs provide a compelling advantage in the competition for top performers. Transitioning to an ESOP does not dilute leadership effectiveness; it enhances it by aligning employee interests with organizational goals—ESOPs foster environments of shared responsibility and strategic focus. Our leadership team has been able to maintain complete operational control while benefiting from a workforce that is highly engaged in driving the firm's growth. The ESOP structure supports long-term strategic planning over short-term profit-taking, avoiding the common pitfalls seen in private equity-backed models. Rather than optimizing for quarterly returns, we can invest with a multi-year horizon, ensuring that client service quality and firm values remain paramount. While ESOPs present significant benefits, successful implementation requires careful planning, feasibility analysis, and experienced advisory support. Establishing an ESOP involves regulatory compliance, valuation considerations, and administrative responsibilities that must be managed thoughtfully. At our firm, meticulous planning was critical to our success—from conducting a detailed feasibility study to structuring the right alternative practice framework to separate audit and advisory services. For C-suite leaders considering this path, early engagement with experienced ESOP advisors and a commitment to transparent internal communication is essential to ensuring a smooth transition and maximizing long-term value. As firms navigate the evolving business environment—marked by heightened private equity activity, shifting workforce expectations, and increasing competition—succession planning must be about more than just ownership transfer. It must be about sustaining the organization's mission, values, and impact for future generations. ESOPs offer a proven, strategic alternative that simultaneously addresses financial, cultural, and operational objectives. Our experience reinforces that employee ownership preserves and strengthens businesses, ensuring they remain vibrant, client-centered, and growth-oriented. For C-suite leaders evaluating their succession options, ESOPs represent more than a transaction; they represent a transformational opportunity to build lasting value for all stakeholders. By investing in employees as owners, companies can secure their legacy, drive superior performance, and contribute to stronger communities in the decades to come.
India.com
10-06-2025
- Politics
- India.com
If Israel attacks nuclear facility in Tehran... Iran can take a big step, IAEA chief warns of....
If Israel attacks nuclear facility... Iran can take a big step, IAEA chief warns of.... Rafael Grassi, the chief of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has made a big claim about Iran. According to reports, Iran has told Grassi that if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities, then there will be serious repercussions. Grassi in an interview, has that the attack could potentially have a unifying effect and could strengthen Iran's resolve to make nuclear weapons. He told that Iran's nuclear program is 'wide and deep'. Only a very large and destructive attack will be needed to stop it. He said, 'When I say deep, I mean – many facilities are extremely well protected. Heavy and destructive force will be needed to disrupt them.' Donald Trump's warning to Netanyahu Grassi's comments came at a time when the US and Iran are holding nuclear talks, which are being mediated by Oman. This is the reason why the Trump administration in the US does not want Netanyahu to attack Iran at such a time. Just last week, US President Donald Trump said that he had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to take any action that could disrupt the nuclear talks with Iran. Iran accelerates nuclear program Trump said in the Oval Office, I told him (Netanyahu) that it would not be right to do this now, because we are very close to the solution now. It can change at any time. Meanwhile, many analysts claim that Iran has accelerated its nuclear program and is increasing uranium enrichment to weapons level. Many analysts even say that it has acquired the ability to make a nuclear bomb in a few weeks.
Time of India
24-04-2025
- Automotive
- Time of India
Lucas Di Grassi becomes 4th Formula E Driver in his 40s to reach podium, fans hail him as the GOAT
Lucas Di Grassi , the 40-year-old Brazilian driver who races for Lola Yamaha ABT, has made it to an exclusive list after grabbing the second spot on the podium at the Miami E-Prix . He is only the fourth Formula E racer to have reached a podium in his forties. He has 41 podium places in his Formula E career so far. Formula E has shared Grassi's achievement on its social media accounts and has called him the Goat of sustainable motorsport . Lucas Di Grassi is rocking at 40 Sharing a special poster titled '4 At 40' to highlight Lucas Di Grassi's achievement, the official X account of Formula E mentioned in the caption: 'Welcome to the club! @LucasdiGrassi joins an exclusive list after his second place finish at the #MiamiEPrix.' The other three drivers to have won a podium spot in their 40s are Nick Heidfeld, Andre Lotterer, and Stephane Sarrazin. A fan reacted to the tweet, 'The new 20's.' Another called Grassi a 'Living legend!' Meanwhile, a comment on Instagram read: 'Brazilian baby!!!! <3 @lucasdigrassi 'almost created FE', he deserves to be in every single exclusive club, he loves FE and the most important, he truly believes in every single thing he says about FE.' Another tweet shared by Formula E featured Grassi's picture from his first podium win in Season 1 in Beijing and the one from his recent win in Miami. It went with the caption: 'The goat of Formula E?' And fans and followers of Formula E couldn't agree more. A fan reacted, 'Without a single doubt The Goat.' Another wrote, 'Absolutely.' A fan also wrote on Instagram in reaction to the same poster, 'the greatest and experienced driver of @fiaformulae,' along with clapping emojis. Following his second place at the Homestead-Miami Speedway this month, Lucas Di Grassi opened up about how it was an emotional moment for him. He had gone without a win for the last two years and wasn't expecting much from his car this year either. 'You need to have a lot of discipline to be able to continue the work and continue to push when you have bad results. When you have good results, it's very easy. But when you have bad results, to go back home, keep the focus, keep the head down and keep doing the work that you do, that at one point it's going to pay off. It's hard because you work, it doesn't. Then you work again, it doesn't pay off again. And then you keep working until it pays off,' he said at the Miami E-Prix. Also Read: Lucas Di Grassi's podium at Miami E-Prix was an emotional moment: 'You need to have lot of discipline to be able to work when you have bad results' Lucas Di Grassi will now be aiming to grab a few more podiums this season. The next Formula E race is the Monaco double header, scheduled for May 3 and 4. Get the latest IPL 2025 updates on Times of India , including match schedules , team squads , points table and IPL live score for CSK , MI , RCB , KKR , SRH , LSG , DC , GT , PBKS , and RR . Don't miss the list of players in the race for IPL Orange Cap and IPL Purple cap .
New York Times
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Marco Grassi, Who Brought Old Paintings Back to Life, Dies at 90
Marco Grassi, a connoisseur of old masters who brought a restorer's hand to art criticism and a critic's eye to restoration, died on March 30 in Manhattan. He was 90. His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his wife, Cristina, who is an artist. As a third-generation scion of Florentine art restorers and dealers, Mr. Grassi, a rare freelance restorer, was the product of a world that was itself rarefied: the art of late medieval and early Renaissance Tuscany, and those who lived among it. Like his grandfather, he had trained as a conservator at the centuries-old Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Moving between Europe and America, he was as comfortable in the gilded salons of the world's richest private collectors as he was at his workbench. In his sunlit restoration studio, first in downtown Manhattan, then on the Upper East Side, Mr. Grassi was in intimate touch with the paintings of long-dead masters, including Ugolino da Siena, Luca di Tommè, Giovanni di Paolo, Domenico Beccafumi and others. They gave him sustenance. He, in turn, gave them renewed life. Mr. Grassi, who often wore a tweed suit underneath his blue apron, moved in 'that murky backstage frequented by scholars, technicians and craftsmen where the pulleys, gears, curtains and props of the art world are manipulated,' he wrote in 'In the Kitchen of Art: Selected Essays and Criticism, 2003–20' (2021), an anthology of his writings for The New Criterion magazine. For more than 20 years he worked in Switzerland as the personal conservator for Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a billionaire industrialist, 'vacuous and ephemeral' though 'passionate,' in Mr. Grassi's trenchant assessment. The baron had perhaps the greatest private art collection in the world (which is now the basis of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid), and Mr. Grassi had the free run of it. In the beginning of the 1970s, he set up in New York City, where he became one of the world's most sought-after restorer of old masters. He established a studio at Broadway and Houston, and later a gallery. 'He was among the most admired private restorers of Italian painting, in particular of the 14th and 15th century,' Keith Christiansen, the former chairman of the department of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said in an email. To his criticism for The New Criterion, Mr. Grassi brought this tactile sense, his editor, Roger Kimball, recalled in an interview. 'You felt that his encounters with the art was hands-on,' he said. 'You felt there was a deep interaction, having to do with the senses.' Mr. Grassi's analysis of the famous 'Madonna and Child' by Duccio di Buoninsegna, a 13th- and early 14th-century work acquired by the Met in 2004 for more than $45 million, the museum's largest purchase at the time, displays this visual sensitivity. 'Although tiny, it has none of the annoying 'look-at-me-with-a-magnifier' precision of a miniature,' Mr. Grassi wrote of the painting in one of his essays. 'The artist places the Virgin at a slight angle to the viewer, behind a fictive parapet. The Madonna 'gazes away from the child into the distance while he playfully grasps at her veil,' he wrote, adding: 'With these subtle changes, Duccio consciously developed an image of sublime tenderness and poignant humanity.' For centuries the paintings of this early period were held in lesser esteem, compared with the masterworks of the Renaissance. Mr. Grassi was their great champion, an epoch in painting 'generally called the primitive period, but which is not primitive at all,' he remarked in an interview with the fine art firm Disegno. Marco Ralph Grassi was born on July 7, 1934, in Florence, Italy, to Arturo, an art dealer, and Cornelia(Lemky) Grassi, an American from Indianapolis. Mr. Grassi recalled in his book that his parents entertained the liberating American generals in his boyhood home as the war ended, including Mark Clark. These contacts helped the family gain passage to New York in 1945. Mr. Grassi attended the Delbarton School, a Catholic boys boarding school in New Jersey, and graduated from Princeton with a B.A. in art history in 1956. Homesick for Italy, he returned to Florence in 1959 and began an apprenticeship at the Uffizi's restoration workshop, then undertook four years of training at the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome, and at the Swiss Institute for Art Research in Zurich. He set up his own restoration studio in a Florentine palazzo in 1962, but the business struggled, until one day in 1964 when Baron Thyssen turned up and asked the young restorer to authenticate 'an almost comical late-19th-century imitation of a Florentine Renaissance sculpture.' Mr. Grassi spotted the fake immediately, and his decades-long partnership with the free-spending, high-living baron was born: Mr. Grassi was hired as the nonresident conservator for the baron's collection. For years thereafter he 'had the pleasure of strolling at will, often entirely alone and undisturbed, through Thyssen's incomparable anthology of European art,' he wrote. This was when Mr. Grassi's essential training took place. 'He was from a generation where you just took a painting and started working on it,' his son Matteo, also an art dealer, said in an interview. 'He was used to being with Thyssen. They would have lunch and he would say, 'I want to work on that one.'' He was working for the baron in Lugano, Switzerland, in November 1966 when the Arno River leaped its banks and a torrent of mud and filthy water overwhelmed Florence's treasures. Mr. Grassi got in his car and drove 12 hours. 'We and other 'first-aid' intervention squads were dispatched as the need arose — and Santa Croce,' the great basilica and repository of masterworks, which flooded in the disaster, 'was immediately identified as the highest of priorities,' he wrote. The water had risen 20 feet around the church. Mr. Grassi was put to work helping to restore Giorgio Vasari's immense 'Last Supper,' which had been 'totally immersed for more than 12 hours,' Paula Deitz wrote in The New York Times. It was a process that took five decades to complete, but which he helped begin by ''papering' the surface to protect the color layer,' using small squares of mulberry paper with an adhesive. Mr. Grassi and his family moved to New York in 1971 to escape Italy's darkening political climate, and there his connection with Baron Thyssen and a booming art market were a great help in gaining clients, his son said. Apart from his wife, whom he married in 1969, and his son, Mr. Grassi is survived by a daughter, Irene; a brother, Luigi; and four grandchildren. 'He knew how to work the paintings,' Ms. Grassi said in an interview. 'He knew what the artist was doing. He was in front of something he understood.'
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Athletes, environmentalists debate proposed statewide ban on artificial turf fields in Maine
Apr. 9—There is a price to be paid whenever Ben Grassi plays soccer on synthetic turf. The senior Mount View High School defender told state lawmakers Wednesday that his knees and hips ache from trying to start, stop and jump on the slippery, pebble-topped surfaces at rival schools. And because the rubber absorbs heat, turf fields leave him more tired and dehydrated than grass. The varsity co-captain says synthetic turf slide burns are more painful and heal slower than grass burns. "As you consider state policy around artificial turf, it is my hope that you prioritize the health and success of Maine student-athletes, rather than any perceived benefits regarding ease of maintenance and cost savings," Grassi said during a legislative committee hearing on a proposed artificial turf moratorium. The proposed legislation, LD 1177, would pause the installation of new synthetic turf statewide for three years while the Maine Department of Environmental Protection completes a study of its environmental and health impacts. Existing fields could remain in use but could not be patched or replaced. Artificial turf has been a topic of heated debate for years, in Maine and across the country. Critics highlight the environmental and health risks. Synthetic turf contributes to microplastic pollution and often contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals like lead and mercury that can leach into the soil and groundwater. It can become dangerously hot in the summer, posing risks to athletes. Supporters like its durability, low maintenance and year-round usability. Synthetic turf doesn't require watering or mowing, making it attractive to communities looking to save on upkeep costs. It provides a consistent playing surface in adverse weather conditions, like those in Maine. Biddeford Athletic Director Dennis Walton led the charge in defense of synthetic turf during Wednesday's three-hour public hearing. He said synthetic turf had some environmental benefits over grass fields that critics didn't want to admit, like not needing pesticides and using less water. His biggest complaint was about the bill's top-down approach to making community decisions. "This legislation undermines the principle of local control that should govern these important decisions," Walton said. "If the goal is truly to gather information, why not conduct the study without restricting local control in the meantime?" His concerns were echoed by the athletic directors from Lewiston and Sanford high schools, as well the University of Maine — which highlighted student-athlete support for playing on synthetic turf — and a trade group of independent high schools and colleges that include Colby, Bates and Bowdoin. The Mills administration didn't take a position on the bill, which was introduced by Assistant House Majority Leader Lori Gramlich, D-Old Orchard Beach. DEP Commissioner Melanie Loyzim said it was logical to question the use of synthetic turf but warned that her department would need funding to conduct such a study. The number of Maine middle and high schools with artificial turf has more than doubled in the last decade. There are 35 middle and high schools with artificial turf fields, plus another 20 or so at Maine colleges, said Mike Burnham, executive director of the Maine Principals' Association. Many of those projects have met with local resistance from groups worried about environmental damages. But new artificial turf fields have replaced natural grass fields at several high schools in the last five years, including at Kennebunk, Messalonskee in Oakland, Cony in Augusta and Gardiner. South Portland will ask voters to choose whether they want to improve the school's athletic complex with a $4.3 million natural grass option, a $5.1 million artificial turf option or no improvements. Kittery, Cumberland and the Gray-New Gloucester district have all grappled with the issue over the last year. Copy the Story Link
