For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.
Compliance July 29, 2025
ESOP Association Launches Campaign Pressing For Aronowitz’s EBSA Confirmation
The campaign includes a website, which urges Aronowitz’s confirmation and includes sections called “How ESOPs Benefit Everyone” and “What’s the Problem with EBSA?”
Reported by James Van Bramer
The ESOP Association, an organization that advocates for employee stock ownership programs, has launched a paid campaign to urge the U.S. Senate to confirm Daniel Aronowitz as assistant secretary of labor for the Employee Benefits Security Administration as soon as possible.
The campaign includes a website, “Stop EBSA’s War on ESOPs.” The site urge’s Aronowitz’s confirmation and includes sections called “How ESOPs Benefit Everyone” and “What’s the Problem with EBSA?”
Among the problems cited, the association pointed to the question of “adequate consideration”—the process by which “an ESOP Trustee can, in good faith, determine the fair market value for company stock.” The absence of guidance has led to a “regulatory vacuum [leading] to inconsistent and conflicting enforcement, numerous multi-year DOL investigations and audits, and extensive nuisance lawsuits filed by plaintiff’s firms seeking payouts,” the association stated.
Last week, each house of Congress hosted a session on ESOPs in which James Bonham, the president and CEO of the ESOP Association, testified, taking aim at what he deemed to be mismanaged and abusive investigations by EBSA.
“Congress and the White House want ESOPs and employee ownership to grow, but we can’t undo decades of anti-ESOP bias until Dan Aronowitz is confirmed,” said Bonham in a statement. “We ask the Senate leadership to confirm Dan as quickly as possible so he and Secretary Chavez-DeRemer can begin building a brighter future for ESOPs in America.”
This week, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will consider three ESOP bills.
During testimony before Congress in June, Aronowitz pledged to “end the war on ESOPs,” if he were confirmed as the head of EBSA. Aronowitz cleared a vote in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on June 26 by a 14 to 9 vote, but his nomination has not yet been voted on by the full Senate. Aronowitz’s confirmation requires a majority.