Filing 5310s

[Guest Benefits Person]

My company is somewhat of a "serial acquirer." It has always been our practice to have the seller terminate their plan in a stock acquisition, file the 5310 and then wait until the LOD has been issued in order to allow rollovers into our plan (this has been done on the advice of our ERISA counsel). Sometimes the selling company's TPAs file the 5310, sometimes we do it. Either way, we are at the mercy of people who know that they will lose the accounts in the end and have no urgency to complete the filing or to provide us with the data in a timely manner. As a result, most terminations take between 18-24 months and the participants are not happy that they cannot access their monies (even though we explain that these are retirement funds and should not be accessed but reinvested). We are exploring our options of not filing the 5310s. ERISA counsel has pointed out the possible risks involved in changing our SOP.

We do not do this for asset acquisitions since we are usually not taking on successor liability.

I am interested in hearing how all of you handle this...do you file 5310s? do you have an SOP in place or do you approach it on a case-by-case basis? Do you feel strongly about it one way or the other? Has your counsel provided any other direction?

Thanks much.