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Bloomberg Agrees to Buy Bureau of National Affairs for About $990 Million

BNA, which publishes the Daily Labor Report and U.S. Law Week, will 'significantly grow Bloomberg's presence in Washington' and its research will contribute to coverage and analysis of employment, health care, labor, accounting, intellectual property and telecommunications, Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg Hit With $70M ERISA Lawsuit Over 401(k) Fund Lineup

"According to the allegations in the Complaint, Bloomberg failed to remove two funds from its Plan ... despite those funds suffering from poor investment performance for over a decade." [Rajappan v. Bloomberg L.P., No. 26-0785 (S.D.N.Y. complaint filed Jan. 29, 2026)]

Bloomberg Headline: 'Rich Professionals Are Using Pension Plans as a Tax Dodge'

"There's one area where the traditional pension plan is getting new life -- as a tax dodge for wealthy business owners. Pensions, also known as defined-benefit plans, can be used by doctors, law partners and wealth managers to stash hundreds of thousands of dollars in income a year. By doing so, they'll get around the income limits Congress created to bar them from a generous new tax break for owners of pass-through entities, who report the firms' income on their individual tax returns."

Millennials Embrace ESG Option in Bloomberg's 401(k) Plan

"Millennials are the largest identifiable group that has elected to participate in the ESG-focused fund in Bloomberg's $2.5 billion U.S. 401(k) plan ... Just under 1% of the plan's total assets are invested in the Parnassus Core Equity Fund, which focuses on socially conscious U.S. large-cap companies."

Bloomberg Discrimination Decision Loaded Against Work-Life Balance

In her opinion siding with the Bloomberg media company (PDF), Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska did more than rule against the dozens of women who had joined the class-action lawsuit alleging systematic discrimination. She also smacked down any notion that workers might expect their employers to honor their family-life decisions.

New York Pensions Set Return Expectations Too High at 8%, Mayor Bloomberg Says

" 'It's much too high an assumption for us, I think it should be lowered,' Bloomberg said today at a news briefing, referring to the city's five pensions holding almost $104 billion. 'That's going to require the city to put in more money.' "

NASRA Response to Bloomberg Article (PDF)

2 pages. Excerpt: Re: Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another $1 Trillion Bailout, Bloomberg, March 3, 2009. The Bloomberg article on public pensions falls into some of the same traps as many other pension-related critiques: ignoring important countervailing evidence; failing to place the size and scope of public pension issues into their proper context; and mistakenly applying a few bad examples to the entire public pension community.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg Takes Step Toward Equality with Pension Funds for Same-Sex Couples

Excerpt: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his appointees to the city's five pension funds will be proposing resolutions to treat marriages and civil unions of same-sex couples performed outside of New York State like any other marriage for purposes of pension fund benefits.The Mayor's move was spurred by a similar action New York State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi took in October to have the state's retirement system treat Canadian marriages of same-sex couples the same as[.]

Five Reasons Why Bloomberg is Right to Blast 401(k) Rollovers

"Rolling a 401(k) account into an IRA is generally a really bad idea, for the following reasons: Higher fees.... Not only higher fees, but more fees.... No advice.... Bad advice.... Loss of protection from creditors.... [T]here are very few compelling reasons to remove 401(k) balances from qualified retirement plan accounts."

Telecommuting Creates 'Nexus' in Many States, Subjecting Products and Services to Sales Tax

"Telecommuting and maintaining in-home offices are among the activities that can create state tax liabilities, a Bloomberg BNA survey found. Potential Impact: Employers may be exposed to unexpected taxes when allowing employees to telecommute from other states. Few states have adopted nexus policies aimed at fostering alternative-work arrangements, according to a survey of state revenue agencies by Bloomberg BNA[.]"

These Top Law Firms Got the Most ERISA Class Action Biz

"The law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius tops the list of law firms getting the most business from large employers hit with ERISA class actions in the past year. Since November 2015, Morgan Lewis has been hired to represent employers in 19 [ERISA] class actions, according to Bloomberg BNA's research.... O'Melveny & Myers LLP closely follows."

Employer Groups See Mixed Bag in EEOC Wellness Plan Ruling

"Orion won on the voluntary standard issue, but there should be a concern about the court's application of the safe harbor provision in the Americans with Disabilities Act ... Employers have taken a position that the safe harbor applies and the court essentially ruled that out in this case, she said. The deference the court is giving to the safe harbor provision isn't what employers were hoping for[.] ... Some employer groups see this as a win for their side. The Orion decision is a 'very strong rebuttal' to the EEOC's final regulation that the limited incentives that employers can provide to participants in wellness plans can't go over 30 percent, Mark Wilson, chief economist at the HR Policy Association in Washington, told Bloomberg BNA[.]"

The HHS Final Rule to Implement Health Insurance Exchange Markets

"Although the final rule has a more immediate impact on individuals and small businesses, it also has implications for large employers, human resources and public policy experts told Bloomberg BNA. 'This matters to large employers in a less explicit manner, but it is important because states will have the option of opening their exchanges in 2017 to large employers,' ..."

Recent DOL Initiatives: Questions Answered

Questions from a webinar titled 'Managing and Protecting Your Employee Benefit Plans: New [DOL] Initiatives', answered by Sherwin Kaplan, former co-chair of the Bloomberg BNA Pension & Benefits Publications Advisory Board.

Supreme Court Ruling Leaves Open Questions on Restructuring Health Plans and Workforces

"Employers will have difficult decisions to make following the Supreme Court's June 28 ruling to uphold most of the 2010 federal health care system overhaul, especially about whether employers can avoid costly pay-or-play penalties under regulations still being drafted, employee benefit attorneys told BNA. The lack of final regulations on major provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including ones implementing employer penalties under tax code Section 4980H, means that many employers do not yet see clearly how they might restructure their employee benefits or, in some industries, restructure their workforces in response to the new regulations."

Spokesman Says DOL Won't Enforce the Fiduciary Rule

"The Labor Department won't be enforcing the fiduciary rule -- at least for now -- after a federal appeals court in Louisiana vacated the rule, a department spokesman told Bloomberg Law March 16.... It's helpful to the industry that the DOL is acknowledging that it covers the whole rule and has a nationwide impact, Kevin Walsh, an attorney with Groom Law Group [said] ... It would also be helpful for the DOL to make clear that the rule is off the books and other parties can't enforce it, Walsh added."

Your Plan Costs More Than Mine: The Price Tag for Paid Leave

"The main factor that changes the cost calculation is the number of people likely to use the leave, and that largely depends on whether the program guarantees a worker will be able to return to the job after taking leave and what kinds of leave are covered.... [P]ersonal medical leave is the most expensive to cover, parental leave falls in the middle, and family care leave is the least costly.... Based on private sector use of leave afforded under the [FMLA, one study] estimated that if 13 million workers took paid leave for a medical issue for an average of 4.7 weeks at $452 per week, it would cost $27.5 million in benefits."

Supreme Court May Hear Case on ERISA Participants' Standing to Sue

"Because in most instances defined benefit plan participants are not at risk of losing their benefits when the plan loses money -- though the investment losses may make future benefit enhancements less likely -- a requirement of individual harm, whether for statutory or constitutional standing purposes, could effectively preclude participants of these plans from pursuing recovery of plan losses. Second, if the Supreme Court were to rule that individual harm is required as a condition for having statutory standing under Section 502(a)(2) or (3), the ruling could increase the likelihood for mounting an effective argument in defined contribution litigation that plaintiffs lack standing to sue to recover for investment losses in funds in which they did not invest[.]" [Thole v. U.S. Bank N.A., No. 16-1928 (8th Cir. Oct. 12, 2017; cert. pet. filed June 22, 2018)]

Andrus Wagstaff Fights Class Bid in Nationwide 401(k) Fee Suit

"The lawsuit claims Nationwide's practice of charging a flat, 1 percent fee for administrative services allowed the company to collect fees that were nearly 10 times the median fee throughout the industry. Nationwide at one point received $625 per investor, per year, for servicing a 401(k) plan covering fewer than 30 people, when a reasonable fee would have been closer to $64, according to the complaint."

Hartford Gets Pro-Insurer Ruling on Late-Filed Benefit Appeals

"New Hampshire's 'notice-prejudice' rule -- which makes it harder for insurers to deny late-filed claims -- doesn't apply to benefit claims under [ERISA], the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held Feb. 20. The court followed decisions of the Seventh and Ninth circuits, adding that 'no federal court has applied any state's common law notice-prejudice rule' to a late-filed appeal made to an ERISA plan." [Fortier v. Hartford Life & Accident Ins. Co., No. 18-1752 (1st Cir. Feb. 20, 2019)]