Tag: fiduciary duty

Make Sure You Take Sufficient Steps to Find Missing Participants

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)’s guidance for locating missing participants in the event of a plan termination has become more widely accepted for finding such participants in a variety of scenarios. But the guidance does not clearly state at what point the retirement plan fiduciary has met its obligation to track down missing participants […]

retirement

DOL Sues to Recover Losses to Vermont ESOP

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is suing the fiduciaries of a Vermont employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) for violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), alleging that First Bankers Trust Services, Inc.’s 2011 purchase of a company on behalf of the ESOP from its two previous owners caused the plan to suffer […]

BP Litigation: Plan Sponsor Not Liable for Employees’ Failure to Inform

Fiduciary status under ERISA “is not an all-or-nothing concept,” according to a recent federal district court ruling that found BP and its North American unit were not liable for their retirement plan employees’ breaches of fiduciary duty. The lawsuit arose from a BP company stock plan available as investment to plan participants that plunged in […]

Fiduciaries Have Ongoing Duty to Monitor, High Court Vacates Tibble

The U.S. Supreme Court on May 18 unanimously vacated a federal appellate court ruling that found that employee retirement plan participants’ claims about fees applied to their plan were time-barred, sending a clear message that plan fiduciaries have an ongoing duty to monitor investments, their expenses and other related claims within that duty’s statute of […]

Supreme Court Ponders Continuing Duty of Prudence Limits in Tibble

On Feb. 24, the first retirement plan “excessive fee” case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. It raises the question of how long a fiduciary must monitor its employer-sponsored plan’s investments — or whether that duty can instead be measured at a single point in time. A lower-court ruling had found the ERISA claim […]