Not to be too flippant or cynical, but whenever, over the years, I have heard an economist base a nice, highly logical, elegantly structured analysis on the underlying base assumption that investors or business people or consumers are acting rationally – without accounting for the likelihood that they won’t actually do that – I understand
Fiduciaries
The Devil is in the Details: Failure to Provide Forms Can Be a Fiduciary Breach
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries
Citigroup, McGraw-Hill, and Moench
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Not unexpectedly, the Second Circuit has just adopted the Moench presumption, in this ruling here and this one here involving stock drop cases. For those with less time on your hands, here is an excellent news media summary of these stock drop rulings out of the Second Circuit yesterday. I have long posited that, given…
Defensive Plan Building After Loomis
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Many of you may remember the race among law firms, after the trial court ruling in Tibble, to issue client alerts advising plan sponsors to make sure they were not holding retail share classes in their 401(k) plan investment options. Now, of course, we have the Seventh Circuit holding that it is just plain…
Loomis, Hecker, Tibble and the Evolution of Excessive Fee Claims
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
Well, well, well. Here is the story – well-presented by two lawyers from Williams Mullen – of the Seventh Circuit deciding this month, in the case of Loomis v Exelon Corporation, that holding retail class mutual fund shares, rather than cheaper institutional share classes, in a defined contribution plan was not sufficient to establish…
Retreat From the High Water Mark: Excessive Fee Litigation After Tibble
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in 401(k) Plans, Fiduciaries
By the way, I never did make available a full copy of the article I referenced in this blog post here, which I wrote for the Spring 2011 edition of the Journal of Pension Benefits. The article analyzes excessive fee litigation in light of the trial rulings in Tibble, against the backdrop of…
The Lessons of Unisys
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Here is a very nicely written opinion out of the Third Circuit in Renfro v Unisys rejecting a breach of fiduciary duty claim alleging excessive fees in the mutual fund options in a company’s 401(k) plan. A few particular points are noteworthy. The first is the detailed explanation in the opinion of the reason that…
Talking About Fees
Summer time and the living is easy. Well no, not really – which is fine, because nothing makes a lawyer (at least this lawyer) more nervous than having time on his hands. Time demands have, though, cut down on my posting since the 4th. Still, I have had time over the past few weeks to…
Owning Your Advice
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Fiduciaries
I have blogged many times on the DOL’s progressive or aggressive (the adjective you choose depends on your view of the changes) program to alter the fiduciary landscape of defined contribution plans, by – in general – increasing the flow of information among providers, participants and plan sponsors on the one hand, and on the…
Fiduciary Liability: Risks and Insurance
By Stephen Rosenberg on
What’s that old saying – your lack of foresight doesn’t make it my emergency, or something to that effect?
I am a little guilty of that here, in my advice to you, at the relative last minute, to hurry up and register for a webinar on the intersection of insurance law, ERISA and fiduciary liability.