By the way, speaking of Fifth Third Bancorp, I take exception at the assertion (see here, for instance) that every circuit to consider the issue has effectively adopted the Moench presumption, although with some dispute over how and when to apply it. The First Circuit, which tends to favor fact specific resolutions of complex ERISA disputes over sweeping doctrinal approaches to resolving them, rejected a variation on the presumption in 2009 in Bunch v. W.R.Grace. The Court explained:

Appellants seek to induce us to reject State Street’s actions by having us apply a presumption of prudence which is afforded fiduciaries when they decide to retain an employer’s stock in falling markets, first articulated in Kuper v. Iovenko, 66 F.3d 1447, 1459 (6th Cir.1995) and Moench, 62 F.3d at 571–72. The presumption favoring retention in a “stock drop” case serves as a shield for a prudent fiduciary. If applied verbatim in a case such as our own, the purpose of the presumption is controverted and the standard transforms into a sword to be used against the prudent fiduciary. This presumption has not been so applied, and we decline to do so here, as it would effectively lead us to judge a fiduciary’s actions in hindsight. Although hindsight is 20/20, as we have already stated, that is not the lens by which we view a fiduciary’s actions under ERISA. DiFelice, 497 F.3d at 424; Roth, 16 F.3d at 917–18. Rather, given the situation which faced it, based on the facts then known, State Street made an assessment after appropriate and thorough investigation of Grace’s condition. Katsaros v. Cody, 744 F.2d 270, 279 (2d Cir.1984). This assessment led it to find that there was a real possibility that this stock could very well become of little value or even worthless to the Plan. It is this prudent assessment, and not a presumption of retention, applicable in another context entirely, which controls the disposition of this case. See also LaLonde v. Textron, Inc., 369 F.3d 1, 6–7 (1st Cir.2004) (expressing hesitance to apply a “hard-and-fast rule” in an ERISA fiduciary duty cases, and instead noting the importance of record development of the facts).

This came five years after the Court refused to accept and apply the Moench presumption in LaLonde v. Textron, where the Court explained:

As an initial matter, we share the parties’ concerns about the court’s distillation of the breach of fiduciary standard into the more specific decisional principle extracted from Moench, Kuper, and Wright and applied to plaintiffs’ pleading. Because the important and complex area of law implicated by plaintiffs’ claims is neither mature nor uniform, we believe that we would run a very high risk of error were we to lay down a hard-and-fast rule (or to endorse the district court’s rule) based only on the statute’s text and history, the sparse pleadings, and the few and discordant judicial decisions discussing the issue we face. Under the circumstances, further record development—and particularly input from those with expertise in the arcane area of the law where ERISA’s ESOP provisions intersect with its fiduciary duty requirements—seems to us essential to a reasoned elaboration of that which constitutes a breach of fiduciary duty in this context.

At the end of the day, once the Supreme Court has ruled in Fifth Third Bancorp, these decisions may be rendered little more than a historical oddity and an interesting backdrop to the development of the presumption of prudence in the case law. For now, though, they constitute an interesting footnote to the discussion about how the various circuits have, to date, applied the Moench presumption.