Over the past week or so, several interesting items have crossed my desk, none of which have appeared while I have had time to do them justice with a full blown post. We will do three for Wednesday today – even though there is no alliteration at all to that title, as opposed to five
401(k) Plans
Harris, Hecker, Excessive Fees and Marketplace Discipline
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Yesterday, the Supreme Court effectively rejected the idea that mutual fund fees, in the non-ERISA context, are not actionable if consistent with the market as a whole, in response to a Seventh Circuit decision finding that a fund did not pay excessive fees to its investment advisor in light of marketplace discipline (I am oversimplifying…
The Fiduciary Status of Investment Advisors
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
I often explain to people that as a litigator, I am typically presented with a knotty, tied up problem, consisting of all the decisions and plan choices that have been made in the past that eventually resulted in litigation, and that I then have to unravel the knot into its constituent pieces, which can then…
A Parable About the Cable Man
By Stephen Rosenberg on
For reasons too obscure and uninteresting to mention, I have had almost nothing to do with the cable tv industry since, well, it was invented. What’s a DVR, anyway, and why would I want one? But yesterday, I had to obtain digital cable from my local cable company, and called them, braced to be gouged.
On Plan Fees, Wal-Mart and the Costs of Bad Publicity
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans
Ouch. Here’s a story bashing Wal-Mart for having very high plan fees in its 401(k) plan, and wanting to know why in the world it doesn’t negotiate lower fees when it has some ten billion dollars in assets to use as leverage. I am sure the plaintiffs’ class action bar has the same question. A…
On Attorneys Fees and Hecker
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Honestly, I have spent a week scratching my head, off and on, over the Supreme Court granting cert to consider the standards governing when attorneys fees can be awarded in an ERISA case, particularly when they denied cert shortly thereafter in Hecker, which presented the opportunity to address the much more substantive issue…
Is There A Disjunct Between Excessive Fee Cases and the Real World?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans
Here’s a very interesting article from the Financial Times on the Deere/Wal-Mart line of 401(k) suits, in which class actions are being brought on behalf of plan participants alleging that fees in the plans at issue were too high and insufficiently disclosed. I have discussed in other blog posts the essentially diametrically opposed results in…
BusinessWeek on BrightScope
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans
I have posted frequently on BrightScope and their work in rating 401k plans, and in particular about their decision to rate them in a Zillow like manner that can be quickly understood by employees. Here’s a terrific article out of BusinessWeek on the site, and on the people behind it. Its an excellent way to…
A Nice Explanation of the DOL Advisory Opinion on Target-Date Funds
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I like this (relatively) new blog here, the Benefits and Employment Observer, by the lawyers at the small – only in numbers – Washington D.C. shop of Bailey & Ehrenberg. This is the cleanest, most easily understood presentation of the findings of the DOL’s recent advisory opinion “addressing the issue of whether the…
Marx on 401(k) Litigation
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I have a stack of substantive ERISA matters that I have been trying to post on for the last week or two, and I am going to try to work through them over the next few weeks. The thing about a blog, though, is the world keeps on spinning, and each day you find something…