401(k) Plans

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Somehow, RJR Nabisco has always been fascinating, from beginning to now. There must be something about combining tobacco and Oreos that gets the imagination flowing; maybe its the combination of the country’s most regulated consumer product with the wonders of possibly the world’s favorite cookie. Heck, its birth even birthed a book and then, in…

Well, how can I not comment on this, given the focus of both this blog and my practice? The Second Circuit was just presented with the question of whether an insurer has to provide a defense to a company and its officer, under the employee benefits liability portion of a policy, for an ERISA claim…

This Forbes opinion piece by Yale Professor Ian Ayres is interesting for two things, one of broader relevance and one of interest perhaps to me alone. In it, he argues that our analysis of excessive fees as a potential fiduciary breach should not be based solely on fees in general, but also on an analysis…

One of the first long articles I wrote on ERISA (I had already penned some opuses on patent infringement litigation and insurance coverage disputes) was on excessive fee litigation, and was based, at heart, on the Seventh Circuit’s then recent decision in Hecker v. Deere. Titled “Retreat from the High Water Mark: Breach…

I have had a couple of interesting conversations recently about CalPERS considering going to index/passive investing. As I have noted in the past, if a major and highly influential pension fund goes that route, how long will it be until others follow, seeking both safety in numbers and the potential defense to breach of fiduciary…

There is a fascinating story in today’s Wall Street Journal, about First Data Corp. abandoning the practice of making cash contributions to employee 401(k) accounts, as part of cost cutting clearly designed to make the company more profitable (or at least profitable enough) to hold an IPO, which would allow an exit for the leveraged…

For years, in speeches and articles, I have preached the gospel of what I have come to call “defensive plan building,” which is the process of systemically building out plan documents, procedures and operations in manners that will limit the likelihood of a plan sponsor or fiduciary being sued while increasing the likelihood that, if…