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May 19, 2003 - 13,192 subscribers
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Participant Contributions to Multiemployer DC Plans Subject to Same Deadlines as Single-Employer
Overview and commentary on DOL Field Assistance Bulletin 2003-2. Excerpt: "EBIA Comment: Some sponsors and fiduciaries may have imagined that treating participant contributions as plan assets by the 15th business day of the following month is sufficient, but the DOL has repeatedly said otherwise, emphasizing that the deadline is the earliest date on which such contributions can reasonably be segregated from the employer's general assets." (EBIA Weekly)
Watch Out as Pension Losses Mount But Appear as Gains
Excerpt: "Here's one reason why millions of workers are worried about retirement: 320 members of the Standard & Poor's 500 paid out pension benefits equaling 8.5 percent of their pension plan assets last year. At the same time, they replenished those plans with contributions equaling only 4 percent of the assets in their plans." (The [Pittsburgh] Post-Gazette)
Retirement Saving Becoming a Do-It-Yourself Thing
Excerpt: "Either do it yourself or rely on the government's increasingly wobbly system of retirement benefits, but the government is trying to edge away from the responsibility of funding even that. The battle over companies' efforts to convert traditional pensions to cash- balance plans obscures the fact that only a minority of workers in this country have a true pension." (SFGate.com)
ASPA Comments on DOL's Proposed Application of Fiduciary Duty Rules to Automatic Rollovers
Excerpt: "It is critical to ASPA members and their plan sponsor clients that the automatic rollover rules are clear and easy to administer. ASPA is concerned that rules that are too complex, or that impose too much potential liability on plan fiduciaries, will place an unreasonable burden on plan sponsors, particularly small business plan sponsors." (American Society of Pension Actuaries)
Opinion: Let's Do Something About California's Millionaire Public Pensioners
Excerpt: "Our small community's beloved fire chief, only 52 years old, a young leader with a promising future, is gone before his time, taken from us by a devastating state pension plan. Our chief's career was cut short when he 'maxed out,' which, in California, means that at 50 years old and after 30 years on the job, he is entitled to receive a pension that will pay him 90 percent of his final salary with annual cost-of-living increases." (SFGate.com)
Links to Items on Executive Comp, Benefits in General
For CEO Pensions, Rank Has Its Privileges
Excerpt: "Other Minnesota executives also get pension credits for years they didn't serve.... Unlike executive salaries, bonuses and stock option grants, these [supplemental executive] pension perks are disclosed only deep within financial documents, and the descriptions are sketchy." (The [Minneapolis] Star Tribune)
Opinion: Political Pressure Is Reason For Proposed Rule to Expense Stock Options
Excerpt: "[T]he current debate over stock-option accounting has, in reality, almost nothing to do with preventing another Enron-esque debacle, although it has been coupled with that issue for political expediency.... Why would we deliberately choose to kick ourselves when we're down? Mandatory expensing would metaphorically do just that." (Puget Sound Business Journal via bizjournals.com; one-time registration required)
Opinion: Expensing Stock Options Creates More Accurate Financial Picture
Excerpt: "Legislation was introduced in Congress last month that would effectively delay expensing options for three years. The critics' fears, and their rationalizations against expensing options, are self-serving hogwash. Employee stock options are a legitimate expense, and a cost of doing business in today's economy." (Puget Sound Business Journal via bizjournals.com; one-time registration required)
Newly Posted or Renewed Job Openings
CLIENT COMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONAL
for Diversified Investment Advisors
in NY
Principal, Health & Welfare Consultant- Atlanta
for Buck Consultants
in GA
Newly Posted Press Releases
(Post Yours!)
TruStar Solutions Uses HR Marketer to Increase Marketing and PR Effectiveness
(Fisher Vista)
Movers and Shakers: Newly Posted Announcements of Promotions and New Personnel
(Post Yours!)
Perry J. Schneider (Milodragovich, Dale, Steinbrenner & Binney)
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