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'Gates Have Opened' for In-Plan Annuities, LIMRA Analyst Says

"Legislative changes, product development and an enthusiastic industry are opening the gates to annuity products inside retirement plans.... Complexity and availability remain the two biggest hurdles ... Thirty percent of advisors said the products are 'difficult for a sponsor to understand,' while another 28% said 'products are not available on all recordkeeping platforms.' Not surprisingly, better-educated advisors is a big key to connecting lifetime income products with eager plan participants."

Bill Gates Says Benefits Costs Hit Schools

Mr. Gates in an interview said he will use a high-profile conference Thursday in Long Beach, Calif., to urge that more attention be paid to how states calculate their employee-pension funding and health-care obligations.

Supplemental Brief for Petitioner in Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. City and County of San Francisco (PDF)

15 pages. Excerpt: QUESTION PRESENTED: Whether ERISA section 514(a), 29 U.S.C. Section 1144(a), preempts local laws mandating ongoing employer contributions for employee health benefits, or alter-native payments to a local government, and extensive recordkeeping and reporting and disclosure requirements, a question on which the courts of appeals are in conflict.

Employer Mandates and ERISA Preemption: A Critique of Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. San Francisco

Excerpt: The Ninth Circuit's recent decision in Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. San Francisco saves the employer mandate of the San Francisco ordinance from ERISA preemption by slighting the language of the statute and by misapplying the U.S. Supreme Court's existing case law under ERISA Section 514(a). If (as is likely) the Supreme Court rules upon the ERISA status of employer mandates like San Francisco's by adhering to its past decisions, the Court will strike such mandates as ERISA-preempted. Under current law, the Ninth Circuit's opinion in Golden Gate II is not sustainable.

Golden Gate Restaurant Association - Employer Mandates and ERISA Preemption in the Ninth Circuit

Excerpt: This Article focuses on two significant questions in the aftermath of the Ninth Circuit's decision in Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which stayed a District Court ruling that had held the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance preempted by federal law. The core of that ordinance is the requirement that covered employers in San Francisco make minimum outlays for their own programs for their employees' health care or instead make contributions in the required amounts to the city to finance either San Francisco's Health Access Program (HAP) or municipally-run health reimbursement accounts. I conclude that under the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions construing ERISA Section 514(a), ERISA preempts the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance.

Zelinsky on Golden Gate Restaurant Association: Employer Mandates and ERISA Preemption in the Ninth Circuit

Excerpt: As usual, Ed Zelinsky (Cardozo) is first to weigh in on a significant ERISA preemption issue. This time in the San Francisco Golden Gate Restaurant Association preemption case. His forthcoming article in State Tax Notes is: Golden Gate Restaurant Association: Employer Mandates and ERISA Preemption in the Ninth Circuit.

Final SEC Rules to Usher in Floating NAV, Fees, and Gates for Money Market Plan Investments (PDF)

"Since money market funds haven't had to distinguish between shareholders who are 'natural persons' and other types of shareholders before, [the authors] anticipate that existing money market funds that wish to maintain a stable share price will reorganize into two funds -- one with a stable share price for their retail shareholders (who meet the definition of 'natural persons' -- including participant-directed defined contribution plans) and the other with a floating share price for their institutional shareholders. The additional reorganizational expenses may pose a challenge for money market fund sponsors[.]"

Obamacare Insurance CO-OPs at the Starting Gate

"They have rented offices and zero customers. All their capital is borrowed. They're trying to sign the kind of expensive, chronically ill individuals that insurers have avoided for decades. In three weeks they face mighty competitors with a hundred times the resources. But the 24 insurance-company startups created by the [ACA] say they're ready to battle the establishment, stay in business and change health care."

The Tao of Dow: The Five Spiritual Gates of Investing for Retirement

"It takes equal amounts of faith, however, to choose not to play the market and live your financial life off the grid. 1. Determine whether you're an optimist or a pessimist -- and whether it is important for you to be consistent....2. Come to terms with thinking you can know the year of your death. ...3. Ask yourself if you define spiritual attainment as being able to put your savings in the hands of forces beyond your control and forgetting about it for 20 years?...4. Decide whether trusting financial advice is the same as having faith in the world....5. Make a decision about how you want to live your life."

Bill Gates Addresses the 'Completely Unsustainable' Crisis in Public Pensions

There are long-term problems with state budgets that a return to economic growth won't solve. Health-care costs and pension obligations are projected to grow at rates that look to be completely unsustainable, unless something is done.

Text of U.S. Solicitor General Amicus Brief in Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. City and County of San Francisco (PDF)

26 pages. Excerpt: This brief is submitted in response to the order of this Court inviting the Solicitor General to express the views of the United States. In the view of the United States, the petition for a writ of certiorari should be denied.

Text of American Benefits Council Amicus Brief in Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. City and County of San Francisco (PDF)

24 pages. "This case is of significant nation-wide importance to employer-sponsors of health benefits plans and their employees. Council members offer some of the Nation's most generous and well-managed health benefit plans, virtually all of which cover employees that reside in many states, counties, and cities. These multi-state plans are complex undertakings. If the Ordinance and other similar 'pay-or-play' laws are allowed, it will create a 'regulatory balkanization' that would strike at the heart of the purpose of ERISA preemption, which is to encourage employers to establish comprehensive health plans for their employees without regard to the particular state or locality in which they live."

Text of Golden Gate Restaurant Association Case from Ninth Circuit Upholding San Francisco Mandatory Healthcare Expenditure Law (PDF)

38 pages. Excerpt: On April 17, 2008, we heard oral argument on the merits of the City's appeal. We now reverse the judgment of the district court and remand with instructions to enter summary judgment in favor of the City .... The Ordinance mandates that covered employers make 'required health care expenditures to or on behalf of' certain employees each quarter.... The Ordinance does not require any employer to adopt an ERISA plan or other health plan. Nor does it require any employer to provide specific benefits through an existing ERISA plan or other health plan.... Because the City-payment option offers San Francisco employers a realistic alternative to creating or altering ERISA plans, the Ordinance does not 'effectively mandate[] that employers structure their employee healthcare plans to provide a certain level of benefits.'

Amicus Brief: Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. City and County of San Francisco (PDF)

33 pages.

Amicus Brief: Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. City and County of San Francisco (PDF)

40 pages.

Golden Gate Restaurant Association Asks Supreme Court To Vacate Ninth Circuit Stay

Excerpt: The requested stay would prevent enforcement of the ordinance during the period leading up to a decision by the Ninth Circuit on the matter.... . In my opinion, the abstract question of whether legislation has a 'connection to' an ERISA plan, and thus should be preempted, rests on a key assumption in this and the other pay or play cases.

IRS Begins to Open the Gates of 'Cash Balance Jail'

Excerpt: Generally, the IRS will review moratorium plans to determine whether accruals relating to post-conversion service violate IRC § 411(b)(1)(H). Also, the IRS will not treat a moratorium plan as failing to meet the age discrimination rules merely because it provides that interest credits through normal retirement age are accrued in the year of the related hypothetical allocation. However, certain special rules will apply when processing these applications and cases.

CalPERS Paid Lawyers $7 Million in Bankruptcies

"CalPERS has paid two law firms more than $7 million in the Vallejo, Stockton and San Bernardino bankruptcies, even though a federal judge doubts that it has the legal standing to object to city pension cuts.... In the Vallejo bankruptcy, CalPERS from 2008 to 2012 paid $526,356 to the law firm of Felderstein Fitzgerald Willoughby & Pascuzzi. Then CalPERS switched law firms and from 2012 through last November paid K&L Gates $3.2 million for the Stockton bankruptcy and $3.3 million for the San Bernardino bankruptcy. Peter Mixon, the CalPERS general counsel for 11 years, left CalPERS in 2013 and became a partner in K&L Gates last October."

Out-of-Network, Out of Luck? Growing Body of Case Law Says 'No'

"While ERISA preemption in some cases may allow insurers to delay reimbursement, it is not an impediment to a provider's ability to obtain full and fair reimbursement ... [E]ven the presence of an anti-assignment clause is not, in and of itself, dispositive of the standing issue.... [C]ourts have recognized a number of exceptions to the exhaustion requirement[.]"

Impact of QPAM Amendments on CITs: What Banks and Their Advisers Need to Know

"This article analyzes the origins and purposes of the Sole Responsibility Requirement and how it applies in the context of arrangements between banks and investment advisers with respect to CITs. It suggests that, provided certain basic guidelines are followed, the Sole Responsibility Requirement can be reconciled and be consistent with the Bank Maintained Requirement. Consequently, banks and their advisers that adhere to certain basic guidelines consistent with the intent and purposes of the Exemption generally should be entitled to rely on the Exemption for transactions with parties in interest of plans participating in their CITs."