Benefits & ERISA Law

Fiduciary Duties: It Ain't Easy

With regard to my post yesterday about fiduciaries having the power, authority and motivation to act to protect plan participants, of course, that’s a lot easier for a fiduciary to do if its vendors are giving it advance notice of losses before the rest of the market finds out, and a lot harder to do if a fiduciary is one of the vast majority who aren’t given that advantage. See this story right here. A little less flippantly, this story - of alleged advantageous information given to some customers in advance of disclosure to the market as a whole - goes right to why its easy to say (as class action complaints always do) that fiduciaries owe a high duty of care to protect plan assets and beneficiaries, but it isn’t all that easy for fiduciaries to actually do.

Full post as published by Boston ERISA Law Blog on September 23, 2008 (boomark / email).