Wall Street has taken notice of ESOPs and several firms have specialty lending arms for these buyouts.

FORBES: Employees Quietly Emerge As New Force In Buyouts

ESOPs were enabled in 1974 through the federal law ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

FORBES: Employees Quietly Emerge As New Force In Buyouts

ESOPs are, by and large, more likely to offer employees traditional, defined-benefit pension schemes, which insulate workers from the vagaries of share-price movements.

ECONOMIST: Economics focus

Known as employee stock-ownership plans, or ESOPs, the move is being embraced by smaller firms, especially those struggling to find buyers during the weak economy.

WSJ: Small Business Owners Cash Out, but Do Workers Gain?

Another sign that an era may be passing was the termination in September of Lowe's ESOPs, one of the longest-running and most successful programs around.

FORBES: Work and buy and hold

Research that I recently conducted using Department of Labor data concludes that employment within a set of S ESOPs operating continuously over the last decade rose 20 percent, while the overall labor market has been roughly flat.

FORBES: Tough Politics Are the Barriers To True Tax Simplification

In the decade since lawmakers first allowed so-called pass-through entities, known as S corporations, to offer employee stock-ownership plans, the number of these firms offering ESOPs has more than doubled, according to Matrix Global Advisors, a consulting firm.

WSJ: Small Business Owners Cash Out, but Do Workers Gain?

Third, a policy aimed at facilitating employee ownership: S corporation employee stock ownership plans (S ESOPs) are also a deviation from a pure income tax system, but the benefits of promoting employee ownership are broad based and well established.

FORBES: Tough Politics Are the Barriers To True Tax Simplification