On-Demand Learning

ERISA

Transcripts

Recorded on: Aug. 14, 2013

AMY: It's my pleasure to turn this briefing over to Larry Kagney. Larry, are you there? LAWRENCE K. CAGNEY: Yes, I am, Amy. Sorry. We have a lot to discuss. We have two senior executives here from the PBGC who are going to enlighten us on developments in the PBGC's early warning program, and how they're dealing with a number of issues, particularly leveraged buyout transactions. In the materials, you likely have seen that there is a pension investment ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW L. ORINGER: I'd just like to spend maybe 5, 10, minutes doing my little cheerleading thing. I really am a big fan of this area and practicing in it. And I'd like to give my perspective on what the area is about. So first, if you go back enough years, to maybe the late '70s or the early '80s, what our practice was about was we really spent our time doing technical tax qualification issues under the Internal Revenue Code. We were looking at ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW L. ORINGER: OK. Welcome back-- to some of you. As we sort of wind down here, this is a panel-- sort of a multifaceted panel. The different parts of this panel don't really integrate tightly. To me, this is really interesting and I think very valuable because these are sort of the other things, or the sub-specialties that ERISA lawyers deal with. And I think it's really important to try to, almost as a survey matter, to go through them and ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW ORINGER: So we're going to pick up now with another area that is not necessarily technically ERISA, but clearly has become an area that ERISA lawyers focus on extensively. And we talked a little bit at the very beginning of the first session how the practice has moved away from technical code qualification into things like executive compensation and investment management while still worrying about the technical rules. ERISA does apply to various ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW L. ORINGER: OK, so welcome back. As I said before the break, we're going to head into some procedural matters to take us through the end of the day. You've had a lot of information thus far, and hopefully you're absorbing that. Our next speaker is my dear friend and former colleague, Ken Raskin. We were together at White & Case, and he is now at King & Spalding. We've actually both moved on. He is the partner and chair of the employee ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW L. GAINES: All right. We're going to get started in the next segment of the program. I just want to emphasize that a lot of the material that was presented in the first segment of the program is just that. It's an overview. And they'll be many detailed discussions regarding all the things that were presented in that segment throughout the course of the next two days. In particular, Rob was talking about some pretty esoteric stuff in the defined ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW L. ORINGER: OK, Thank you. Welcome back. Hope everyone had a nice lunch. We're going to pick up now with 401(k) plans. I think this is an extremely important presentation as we sort of talked about earlier. I think that American retirement policy has really gone from the traditional classic defined benefit plan to now focusing on, oddly enough, the employee funded 401(k) plan with no guarantee. And that is the center. And that all worked really ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW ORINGER: We're going to move on to a discussion or mergers and acquisitions. This is an area that I think, as we've mentioned, has really evolved in terms of the ERISA practice. I told the anecdote, which I'll tell in abbreviated form now, where I was told by a corporate colleague of mine that he would know when I was successful on an M&A transaction when he didn't know that I was on the M&A transaction. And what he meant by that was ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW ORINGER: OK, we're going to move on now to a panel and a topic that I really like. I think it is an area that is not avoided but missed by too many non litigation ERISA counselors and practitioners. And that is the area of ERISA litigation. I've always taken a real interest in the cases. I just like them, I like the area, I like reading what judges have to say, I like listening to litigators talk about the cases. It's a very different perspective. ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW L. ORINGER: OK, so we're now going to go into the last hour, which is going to have two presentations. The first, as I mentioned a moment ago, is I think just a really, hopefully interesting presentation for you all, which is we've talked a little bit about the evolving role of the ERISA lawyer. Which from my perspective is really the big firm evolving role. We talked about how there are other roles. We talked about how there are other kinds ...

Recorded on: Aug. 8, 2013

ANDREW L. ORINGER: OK, so welcome back, everybody, to the second day. Yesterday, I think that we tried to give you an understanding of a lot of the basic principles that relate to what we do here in the benefits world, the ERISA world. Today, we're going to try to really deal with issues around the edges. We're going to delve into certain aspects. We're going to delve into mergers and acquisitions. We're going to delve into, really, a slightly different ...

Recorded on: Apr. 10, 2013

HOWARD PIANKO: Our last hour, we're going to go into ethical considerations for ERISA lawyers both outside lawyer and also the kind of questions that come up working in-house. We're really pleased to have Howard Shapiro with us. Howard, from Proskauer, is a litigator who many of us have heard of and worked with. And Liza LeAndre from Colgate-Palmolive is here to talk to us from the in-house perspective. I'll turn it over to-- who's starting? You? ...

Recorded on: Apr. 10, 2013

ARTHUR H. KOHN: Ok, just, we'll quickly introduce the panelists and then turn the mic over to John to get us going. MARY E. ALCOCK: Is this me? ARTHUR H. KOHN: Yeah. To my immediate right is my colleague Mary Alcock. And John Valentine, formerly from BNY Mellon, currently, John Valentine LLC. He's off on his own, happily. And Suzzanne Yao from Goldman Sachs. John? JOHN W. VALENTINE: Sure. I'm going to be talking about the big picture for a little ...

Recorded on: Apr. 10, 2013

SPEAKER: No break. There is no break. At the risk of my getting shot let me, on that note, introduce the panelists who are coming up. So do we have the panelists who are coming out? SPEAKER 2: Uh no. You're right here. You're going to be right here. SPEAKER: Alicia? SPEAKER 2: I will find her. Alicia is She's coming. She's here. SPEAKER: OK. So as I indicated earlier, our next panel is going to discuss in greater depth some of the issues that ...

Recorded on: Apr. 10, 2013

HOWARD PIANKO: We're going to switch over. There was some allusions, actually direct references to the prior panel to the world of defined contribution plans. And the next panel-- Patricia Kuhn from BlackRock on my right. Then right next to her-- Nick Waddles from Seyfarth. And we're going to switch over to the defined contribution world and look at the developments-- things that we're seeing from the ERISA fiduciary prospective with respect to DC ...

Recorded on: Apr. 10, 2013

GRACE E. O'HANLON: It's my pleasure to introduce you to the co-chairs of today's program. Arthur Kohn And Howard Pianko. Arthur is a partner in Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, and Hamilton's New York office. His practice focuses on compensation and benefit matters, including executive compensation, pension compliance, and investment employment law, and related matters. Howard is a partner in Seyfarth Shaw's New York office. He advises plan investors on ...

Recorded on: Feb. 11, 2013

HOWARD PIANKO: Hi, everybody. We're going to pick up again. I'm sorry I missed the initial introductions this morning. I'm Howard Pianko. And we'll start us off on this panel. This panel is looking at the ERISA implications, picking up from the hedge fund study that was the first panel. But this panel will look at it from the point of view of the investor, of the plan investor. In this panel, I'm the chief investment officer. I think we're using ...

Recorded on: Feb. 11, 2013

HOWARD PIANKO: OK. We're going to do the ethics part of the program by going back to the second panel. I'm going to resume my role as the Chief Investment Officer. And this hour I'm going to be talking to two different lawyers from the same firm. To my right is Glenn Butash and Linda Haynes. And they're going to be the counsel. I'm going to start off by thanking them for coming. And I really enjoyed meeting your two colleagues this morning. And we ...

Recorded on: Feb. 11, 2013

HOWARD PIANKO: I'm not going to take a lot of time with introductions. The people who are going to talk to us over lunch need no introductions. It's Melanie Nussdorf and Ivan Strasfeld, both of whom have been around, since I'm probably the same vintage, but won't admit it. We've been around since the beginning of ERISA. Melanie and Ivan were actually in government at that time. And the idea behind this session is just we have to sit back and get ...

Recorded on: Feb. 11, 2013

MICHAEL J. ALBANO: OK. OK. So thank you, everyone. We're going to start the next session now. And just to introduce the speakers, we have Erin Cho, who is with Davis Polk, Erin Miner, who is with Credit Suisse, Patrick Menasco, who's at Steptoe, and Suzzanne Yao at Goldman Sachs. And this panel is going to deal with-- we talked a lot this morning about setting up the hedge fund and how the hedge fund manager is going to need to, as part of its strategy, ...

Recorded on: Feb. 11, 2013

GRACE E. O'HANION: It's my pleasure to introduce you to the co-chairs of today's program, Michael Albano and Howard Pianko. Michael is a partner in Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton's New York office. His practice focuses on executive compensation and benefit matters, including disclosure, governance, taxation, design and negotiation of agreements and arrangements, as well as the executive compensation and benefits aspects of mergers and acquisitions, ...

Recorded on: Feb. 11, 2013

SPEAKER 1: --invite them up. But just to help save some time, it's on ERISA litigation, which is a new panel this year. And so it's Shannon Barrett from O'Melveny, Linda Haynes from Seyfarth, Javier Hernandez from Curtis, Mallet, and Sara Pikofsky from Jones Day. HOWARD PIANKO: What we're going to do in this panel is actually, we spent most of the day talking about investments that really relate to large defined benefit plans in the ERISA world-- ...

Recorded on: Jan. 25, 2013

JOAN E. BOROS: Before I introduce the next panel, the Pension Development, I do want to say, I spoke in my opening remarks about the Taleb book about randomness and uncertainty, and building a system that applies to it and addresses it. Well, that's what Jeff and I have done. We have such spectacular faculty that even if one gets caught in Newark and can't get over here, we have a panel member that can do the whole panel by himself. But if his comrade ...

Recorded on: Oct. 5, 2012

LINDA: While Marc and Jeannemarie argue about who's going to go first, let me introduce the next panel. I think you're all familiar with Marc, and he's agreed to speak to the bankruptcy issues involved in compensation. And Jean Marie, we're pleased to have her back with us again to talk about M&A implications in competition and vice versa. She's a partner in the New York law firm of Wachtell Lipton. And has the decision been made who's going to ...

Recorded on: Oct. 5, 2012

MARC R. TREVINO: For lunch today with us, we have Associate Professor of Law at Columbia and the Milton Handler Fellow, Professor Robert Jackson. I thought it would be fun to be educated at lunch. And usually, I would give Robert or any professor a harder time about speaking in our area, because I think that you need some practical experience. SPEAKER: Which he's had some of. MARC R. TREVINO: Which is exactly right. So in addition to just professing ...