It’s not just the environmental groups that are actively participating in the debate – and politics – of climate change. Now the institutional investors that are entering the arena. This past Earth Day I wrote about institutional investors in the U.S. becoming vocal. Now as leaders of G8 most industrialized nations are to meet in … Continue Reading
Earlier this month I asked the question Technical Corrections to the Pension Protection Act of 2006. Another bite of the apple? Would special interest groups be able to accomplish now what they couldn’t accomplish in the PPA? Right question, wrong bill. The just passed Iraq spending bill included a provision giving funding relief to American … Continue Reading
Diehard Cubs fans will know who this is. It’s Pat Pieper, the legendary Cubs’ field announcer, who for 59 years started each game with the announcement above. But that was back in the day when you could look at the number on the back of the uniform and know who that was and what position … Continue Reading
On May 3, 2007, the House of Representative’s Education and Labor Subcommittee on Health Employment, Labor, and Pension held a hearing to consider technical corrections to the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA). Technical corrections are designed to fix mistakes and inconsistencies that were inadvertently included in original legislation. Subcommittee Chairman Rob Andrews (D-NJ) indicated … Continue Reading
All too often we hear about another laptop stolen with sensitive information on it. And all too often it’s personal data about employees. The latest is the retailing giant Neiman Marcus. The Company recently announced that a notebook computer containing personal information on 160,000 current and former employees was stolen. The stolen notebook belonged to … Continue Reading
Here is another example about the importance of properly classifying your employees. Frank Steinberg in his New Jersey Law Blog tells us that the NFL Loses to IRS regarding how the League had been treating their 70-plus Drug Program Agents [DPA’s], who collect urine samples for the drug testing program. The IRS recently ruled that … Continue Reading
Last month a group of more than 60 institutional investors and asset managers with collective assets totaling more than $4 trillion, and leading publicly traded corporations, issued a climate policy call to action requesting Congress and the Federal government to take prompt action on global climate change. The coalition, called Investors and Business for U.S. … Continue Reading
Just one week after reports that the largest investor in Bell Canada was putting together a consortium to take the company over, BCE, Bell Canada’s parent, announced that it was talking about going private with another investor group. BCE, which is widely held, has a market value of about US$26.5 billion. A buyout of the … Continue Reading
The recent theft of two laptops containing information on 40,000 current and former Chicago Public School employees is another reminder that benefit plan sponsors should be asking their service providers how safe is their data. Just how vulnerable is employee payroll and benefit data? Well, if it could happen to Scotland Yard, one the world’s … Continue Reading
It’s ERISA audit time again. The regular tax season is winding down, and accountants will soon be turning their attention to ERISA plan audits. And if you’re a plan sponsor whose plan is subject to an ERISA audit, selecting a plan auditor is a fiduciary function. So here are a few mistakes to avoid when … Continue Reading
It’s now a common event to learn that yet another healthy large company has frozen its defined benefit pension plan. The most recent of which in the news was Fidelity. In many cases, these employers are beefing up other benefits such as an increased match or profit sharing contribution. But very few seem to be … Continue Reading
My very first client was a municipality whose retirement plans covered uniformed police and firefighters with collectively bargained benefits and the civilian employees covered by civil service rules. Somewhere along the line, we drifted away from public employee retirement plans, but now some years later here we are again – working with benefit plans in … Continue Reading
Morton M. Grodzins who was a professor of political science at the University of Chicago is credited with coining the term “tipping point”. Malcolm Gladwell later popularized the term in his 2000 bestselling book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. In common parlance, the term is applied to any process … Continue Reading
A few weeks ago a senior producer from ESPN called me after seeing my post that I wrote the day before Media Day during Superbowl Week, Super Bowl teams in the spotlight, NFL retirees in the background. We talked for about 45 minutes as I gave him some background on the NFL Players Association negotiated … Continue Reading
The retirement issues affecting our aging population are not unique to the U.S. The American Association of Retired Persons, commonly referred to as AARP, has a Policy and Research group that specializes in a vast range of topics relating to older adults and aging both domestically and globally. They put together a collection of recently … Continue Reading
You can lose many personal items in your lifetime – your gloves, your keys, or your glasses. They’re small and replaceable items. But your pension benefit is another matter. What if you lose your pension. Not because someone will take it away from you, but because you can lose track of it. It’s not unusual … Continue Reading
More and more, retirees are finding that it pays to have worked for the government instead of the private sector. That’s the headline of a recent article in USA Today reporting that retired government workers are twice as likely to get a pension as their counterparts in the private sector with a benefit more generous. … Continue Reading
Recently I wrote about being careful to properly classify your workers: independent contractor or employee. But what if you make a mistake, and that independent contractor is really an employee. How do you fix it? Here’s how. There’s two aspects to the fix. From the retirement plan standpoint, you can use one of the correction … Continue Reading
Last night’s media coverage in Las Vegas for the NBA’s All-Star weekend had it all: the Skills Competition, the Charles Barkley-Dick Bavetta race for charity ($50,000 going to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Las Vegas), optimistic talk of a NBA team coming to Vegas, legends of the game, celebrity sightings, etc. But there was … Continue Reading
How long do we have to keep retirement plan records is one of those questions that plan sponsors ask when they start to run out of file cabinet drawers. They’re familiar with their reporting and disclosure obligations that they have under ERISA, but ERISA also requires that plan sponsors retain the records that support the … Continue Reading
In the world of ERISA, there are three parties to a divorce: the retirement plan participant, the ex- (called the alternative payee), and the plan administrator. Or, in the proper order: the participant, the administrator, and the ex-. Because the plan administrator is the person in the middle since he or she has to decide … Continue Reading
Once a year – or so it seems – as part of Super Bowl week, media coverage is given to stories about meager pensions provided to the older retired NFL football players. A major part of the reason is that these guys are not represented by the Player Association. But at least, they have pensions. … Continue Reading
It happens. An employee meets the 401(k) plan eligibility requirements, and the employer unintentionally does not offer enrollment at what should be the employee’s entry date. Roy Harmon in his Health Plan Law blog writes about a similar situation involving a group insurance benefit. The title of his post, “Instatement” In LTD Plan Appropriate Remedy … Continue Reading
