401(k) Plans

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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…

A few more thoughts to round out my run of posts (you can find them here and here) on the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Tibble. First of all, where does revenue sharing go as a theory of liability at this point? The Ninth Circuit essentially eviscerated that theory, and I doubt it has much…

Do they still teach administrative law in law school? I don’t know if they need to bother anymore, because the Ninth Circuit’s exposition of Chevron deference in Tibble, when discussing the 404(c) defense, pretty much sums up everything a practicing litigator needs to know about the subject. It is a first class explanation of…

Well, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed the District Court’s well-crafted opinion in Tibble v. Edison. I discussed the District Court’s opinion in detail in my article on excessive fee claims, Retreat From the High Water Mark. From a precedential perspective, as well as from the point…

I was somewhat stunned – and frankly, to some extent angered – by this article yesterday in Slate, in which a business school professor asserts that, if research from Holland does not support the idea that tax breaks motivate savings, one should do away with the 401(k). This completely misses the point that, in a…