PANC 2020: Washington Update (SECURE, CARES, DOL, Courts)

Joan Neri
Counsel, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
Joan M. Neri has been representing plan sponsors and plan service providers on matters involving benefits, compensation and all aspects of ERISA compliance since 1988. Joan counsels employers, management and plan fiduciary committees of publicly held corporations, closely held corporations, U.S. affiliates of foreign corporations, and tax-exempt organizations on their fiduciary compliance responsibilities. She advises on the design of qualified retirement plans (including ESOPs), nonqualified executive compensation plans and welfare benefit plans, day-to-day plan administrative issues, and transaction planning involving benefit plan acquisitions, plan mergers and plan terminations. Joan represents plan service providers (including registered investment advisers, broker-dealers, third party administrators, and recordkeepers) in fulfilling their obligations under ERISA, including fiduciary status and the considerations associated with structuring, developing and offering investment products and services to ERISA plans. She is a frequent speaker throughout the country on legislative and regulatory developments impacting service providers to ERISA plans, ERISA fiduciaries and employee benefit plans and has authored numerous articles on these topics. Joan is a contributor to Drinker Biddle’s Broker-Dealer Law Blog, which provides practical insights on litigation, regulatory, compliance and fiduciary issues impacting broker-dealers.

Tom Clark serves as the firm’s Chief Operating Officer and leads the firm’s St. Louis office. His expertise encompasses all aspects of employee benefits programs, including the design, implementation and compliance of retirement plans, health and welfare plans, and executive and incentive compensation arrangements. He also has a robust practice assisting covered service providers in meeting their ERISA compliance needs. Mr. Clark’s vast litigation experience complements the firm’s strong and growing ERISA and employment litigation department and includes work on landmark ERISA cases involving complicated ERISA fiduciary duty issues. He has been quoted extensively as an ERISA and employee benefits expert by outlets such as Reuters, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Forbes. Mr. Clark teaches ERISA fiduciary law as an Adjunct Professor at The Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, his alma mater. He is a co-author of the Second Edition of “ERISA: Principles of Employee Benefits Law,” the only treatise of its kind that provides an overview of the regulation of employee benefit plans by highlighting the central principles and competing policies of employee benefits law in a compact and accessible format for a broad audience of readers.

David Whaley
Partner, Thompson Hines
David is a partner in the Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation practice
group. He focuses his practice on assisting private and public companies and
nonprofit organizations with all areas of employee benefits, including design,
implementation and compliance in connection with tax qualified and
nonqualified deferred compensation arrangements (e.g., 409A compliance),
health and welfare arrangements and employee fringe benefits.
David has extensive experience in the area of employee stock ownership plans
(ESOPs). His ESOP experience includes representing company sponsors of
ESOPs and ESOP trustees and fiduciaries in acquisition transactions between
the company, selling shareholders and the ESOP. In addition, he has worked
with ESOP companies and ESOP trustees and fiduciaries in connection with
acquisitions, divestitures and corporate organization once the ESOP owns
company stock. Further, he assists both ESOP companies and lending
institutions in connection with loans being made to ESOP companies so as to
enable those companies to be able to meet their unique needs. Finally, David
assists both ESOP companies and ESOP trustees and fiduciaries in connection
with governmental investigations, participant claims processing, and
governmental and plaintiff litigation.
In addition to his ESOP experience, David’s practice encompasses assisting
employers with modifying and properly administering both small and large
defined benefit and defined contribution plans, supplemental retirement
programs, equity compensation programs, health and welfare arrangements
and employee fringe benefits programs.
In doing such, David assists nonprofit employers in drafting and administering
qualified and nonqualified plans, including 403(b), 457(b) and 457(f) plans. He
assists professional employer organizations (PEOs) in offering employee benefit
programs to their client organizations. David also has the unique experience of
assisting larger employers (both public and private) in establishing benefit
programs for newly established entities resulting from corporate reorganizations.
In addition, he represents plan sponsors before the Department of Labor,
Internal Revenue Service and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in
connection with audits of employee benefit plans.
David also helps employers comply with the mandates of the Affordable Care
Act, providing counsel on the design of eligibility modifications to ensure
compliance with the terms of the “pay or play” mandate in a way that both
protects the employer from penalties while ensuring the continued delivery of an
employee benefit that serves the employer’s recruitment and retention goals.