Re: Bouncing Czechs
The current situation on the left side of the pond is that pensions are practically unheard-of for employees of private corporations. There are still a few old giants, like IBM, that may have a pension plan, but even those are usually closed to new employees. An important exception is that members of some trade unions may have a pension plan managed by the union, rather than their employer(s). Obviously in that case the pension fund is managed independently of any employer, so this doesn't come up.
This writeup is actually confusing, because an ESOP has nothing to do with a pension plan; it instead grants employees the right to purchase shares (always of the employer) at a fixed strike price, usually for listed companies the market price on the date of issue. So if they knew the stock was overpriced, the strike prices of the issued options would be too high and the employees who received those options would find them worthless. So whether this case is actually about an ESOP or a pension plan, participants in the plan would receive less compensation than they would have otherwise, but the mechanism is wildly different.