PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - New IRS Guidance on SECURE 2.0 Act Student Loan Employer Contributions
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - ERISA Forfeiture Litigation
La Reforma Pensional en Colombia
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Understanding Lifetime Income Products
Multiemployer Pension Plans in Mergers and Acquisitions — Troutman Pepper Podcast
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Trends in Recordkeeper Consolidation and Due Diligence
Long-Term Part-Time Employee Eligibility Rules Now in Effect — Troutman Pepper Podcast
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - What the J&J Case Means for Plan Administrators
#WorkforceWednesday: SECURE 2.0 Act - Navigating New Retirement Plan Provisions in 2024 - Employment Law This Week®
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - SECURE 2.0: Leveraging Opportunities Employees Want Most
What Can A Tax Attorney Do For You? A Podcast With Janathan Allen
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Understanding Fees in Retirement Planning
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - ESG Investing by Retirement Plans
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - New Federal Rule Aims to Hold Investment Advisors to a Higher Standard
Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation: Getting Ready for 2024 - Health and Welfare Plan Developments — Special Edition Podcast
Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation: Getting Ready for 2024 - Qualified Plans — Special Edition Podcast
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Auto-Portability: A New Way to Keep Retirement Savings Growing
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - IRS 2024 Health Plan Affordability Threshold May Put Some at Risk
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Partial Plan Terminations
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Virginia Launches New Retirement Savings Program
Welcome to our monthly update on current legal issues for trustees of DC pension schemes, designed to help you stay up to date with key developments between trustee meetings and to support the legal update item on your next...more
Issues affecting all schemes - General Election – impact on pensions - The General Election resulted in a landslide victory for the Labour Party. While no pensions-related announcements have been made since the election by...more
The Department of Labor has issued its final regulation defining fiduciary status for investment advice to retirement investors and the related exemptions for prohibited conflicts—PTE 2020-02 and 84-24. The exemptions provide...more
On April 25, 2024, the Department of Labor published its final regulation defining fiduciary status for investment advice and the related exemptions—PTE 2020-02 and 84-24. The exemptions provide relief from prohibited...more
Executive Summary - Many investment advisers and other financial institutions rely on the Department of Labor’s QPAM Exemption when providing services to, and transacting with, employer-sponsored retirement plans, individual...more
On October 31, the Department of Labor (DOL) released a proposed rule (the Proposed Rule) aiming to redefine and expand who qualifies as an “investment advice fiduciary” under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of...more
Anti-ESG state legislation continues to focus on public retirement plan investing and asset management. Over the last year, 18 states have proposed or adopted state legislation or regulation limiting the ability of the state...more
This post serves as an update to our prior blog post analyzing the impact of this anti-ESG state legislation on public retirement plan investing. Over the past year, 17 states have proposed or adopted state legislation...more
The DOL’s expanded definition of fiduciary advice is described in the preamble to PTE 2020-02. The PTE then provides relief for conflicted non-discretionary recommendations (for example, rollover recommendations), if its...more
The DOL’s new fiduciary “rule” became effective on February 16, 2021. The rule is a combination of a new and expansive definition of fiduciary advice (and status) and an exemption from the prohibitions of ERISA and the...more
Overview: In general, the prohibited transaction rules (in ERISA and the Tax Code) (1) prohibit fiduciaries that provide investment advice to plans subject to Title I of ERISA (including 401(k) plans, pension plans and...more
On December 15, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released a final prohibited transaction class exemption for certain fiduciary investment advice actions. Issuance of the exemption is the latest in the tug of war of...more
On June 29, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor (the Department) formally reinstated its “five-part test” for determining what constitutes “investment advice” under ERISA and Section 4975 of the Internal Revenue Code (the...more
A New York district court granted certification in an ERISA class action brought by employees of Deutsche Bank alleging the individual fiduciaries of the company’s retirement plan engaged in self-dealing and mismanagement of...more
With politics swirling around in the background, the AT&T/Time Warner mega-merger is still up in the air, with DOJ antitrust officials still working away (8 months after the deal was announced) to determine whether...more
On June 1, new SEC Chair Clayton returned the SEC to the arena in the policy debate surrounding the DOL’s Fiduciary Rule. Clayton’s public statement responded to a direct invitation for SEC participation by DOL Secretary...more
Trouble at the Federal Reserve Bank of Virginia, where president Jeffrey Lacker abruptly resigned yesterday after disclosing that he had broken Fed rules in 2012 by relaying private deliberations to a financial analyst and...more
Prepaid card company NetSpend has reached a $53 million settlement with the FTC to resolve claims that the company “deceived customers about when and whether they could access money they deposited on its reloadable debit...more
On March 2, 2017, the Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) proposal to delay its change to the definition of the term “fiduciary” (the “Fiduciary Rule”) was published in the Federal Register. Against expectations, the proposed delay...more
On February 3, 2017, President Trump issued a memorandum directing the Department of Labor to prepare an updated economic and legal analysis of its “Fiduciary Rule.” Compliance with the Fiduciary Rule is generally required on...more
Under current law, stockbrokers are only required to recommend suitable investments to their clients. The Department of Labor has issued a so called “fiduciary rule” which requires brokers, advisors and insurance agents, when...more
RBS has agreed to pay $85 million to the CFTC to resolve allegations that its traders “manipulated the ISDAfix benchmark rate over a period of five years to benefit the bank’s derivatives positions”....more
Ratings Agency Moody’s Corp. has agreed to pay roughly $864 million to resolve federal and state claims that it gave juiced ratings to risky MBS in the run-up to the financial crisis. Half of the total will end up in DOJ...more
The December 22 announcement that Deutsche Bank had settled with the DOJ over long-standing RMBS-related claims and investigations for a reported $7.2 billion prompted this Times long-read that traced the Icarus-like rise and...more