The IRS, he says, was forcing him to award dividends within the old employee stock ownership plan in proportion to an individual's ownership in the company, thus excessively rewarding longtime employees at the expense of newer ones.

FORBES: Thanks For the Memories

May has done 15 to 20 deals involving divestitures from public companies, which were transitioned to employee ownership, often through the use of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).

FORBES: AWC Gives Business Owners A Gradual Exit Option

That literacy paid off last year when the staff acquired the business through an employee stock ownership plan, giving workers an even greater stake in their decisions.

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It is where most of its U.S. employees hail from, and the company has a relatively generous employee stock ownership plan.

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His deal for the company was built around an employee stock-ownership plan that would create big gains for them if Zell later sold to another buyer--a greater fool?

FORBES: How Zell Killed Tribune

Employee Stock Ownership Plan (the ESOP).

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May predicted that some kind of employee stock ownership plan could very well be an element in the structuring of the American Greetings buyout.

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United's employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, which held 55% of the airline, never succeeded in soothing strained relations between labor and management.

FORBES: Work and buy and hold