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Listen to your friend. https://benefitslink.com/cgi-bin/qa.cgi?db=qa_who_is_employer&n=44

On or before the date as of which it wanted to no longer participate in the plan, unless the plan contained a provision that automatically terminated the participation of an entity that is no longer a member of the controlled group, which is sometimes the case. Sure, but for part of the year the plan will be multiple employer, which means you would need to test nondiscrimination differently.

I think that makes for an awful tasting pate!

Despite whatever tolerances the Internal Revenue Code might allow about one or more conditions for treatment as a tax-qualified plan, consider that not amending the plan to end the participation of the no-longer-commonly-controlled organization might result in a multiple-employer plan. A multiple-employer plan might affect consequences under laws beyond tax law, including ERISA’s title I and banking, insurance, and securities laws. The plan’s sponsor, administrator, trustee, and investment manager might check the plan’s investment arrangements to find whether any requires the investor to be a single-employer plan. Some collective investment trusts and other kinds of investments not registered under one or more securities laws are available only to a single-employer plan. Others might respond to your question about whether all three organizations may or should share in a contribution for a year for which the three organizations were two (unrelated) IRC § 414 employers.