I was recently hired by a Department of Defense contractor that was a 100% ESOP. New hires would receive their first stocks after 1800 hours of employment. This was a huge selling point during the hiring process. The founder stepped down to pursue other ventures approximately 1.5 year ago, and a board of directors was established to govern the company. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago Management announced the company was undergoing an acquisition by a much larger native-owned corporation and, along with the acquisition, the dissolution of the ESOP. This acquisition was beyond unexpected to pretty much all coworkers, especially given that the board of directors was barely in the door. It seems pretty clear the process began almost as soon as the founder stepped down. A coworker who has only been there for two years recently received his notice to decide what to do with his stocks. He showed me his previous quarterly updates, with around $2,500 growth each time. He sat at about $18,000 at the last quarterly update, and in the final notice, he had $60,000. This blew my mind that after two years of work, this is the outcome. Then it clicked as to why the executives were probably all on board as most have all been there 10+ years. All of this to finally say that I feel lied to and misled being promised part of the ESOP during the onboarding process, only to be announced shortly after it will be dissolved. I know that acquisitions take many months to complete, and I'd assume the HR department knew that this was ongoing during hiring. Yet, they still used ESOP participation as a hiring tactic when discussing benefits. To be clear, while the final sale price of everyone's stocks is undoubtedly fantastic, the part that bothers me is that I feel lied to about the retirement benefit that weighed heavily on the final decision to come in the first place.