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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: August 4, 2008 2:08:16 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: Big Corporations Robbing Pension Plans to Fund Executive
Benefits
PAGE ONE
Companies Tap Pension Plans
To Fund Executive Benefits
Little-Known Move Uses Tax Break Meant For Rank and File
By ELLEN E. SCHULTZ and THEO FRANCIS
Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2008; Page A1
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121761989739205497.html?mod=hpp_us_pageone
At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their
workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into
resources to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay.
In recent years, companies from Intel Corp. to CenturyTel Inc.
collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations
for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets
companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers
and use them to pay for executives' supplemental benefits and
compensation.
The practice has drawn scant notice. A close examination by The Wall
Street Journal shows how it works and reveals that the maneuver,
besides being a dubious use of tax law, risks harming regular workers.
It can drain assets from pension plans and make them more likely to
fail. Now, with the current bear market in stocks weakening many
pension plans, this practice could put more in jeopardy.
How many is impossible to tell. Neither the Internal Revenue Service
nor other agencies track this maneuver. Employers generally reveal
little about it. Some benefits consultants have warned them not to, in
order to forestall a backlash by regulators and lower-level workers.
The background: Federal law encourages employers to offer pensions by
giving companies a tax deduction when they contribute cash to a
pension plan, and by letting the money in the plan grow tax free.
Executives, like anyone else, can participate in these plans.
But their benefits can't be disproportionately large. IRS rules say
pension plans must not "discriminate in favor of highly compensated
employees." If a company wants to give its executives larger pensions
-- as most do -- it must provide "supplemental" executive pensions,
which don't carry any tax advantages.
The trick is to find a way to move some of the obligations for
supplemental pensions into the plan that qualifies for tax breaks.
Benefits consultants market sophisticated techniques to help companies
do just that, without running afoul of IRS rules against favoring the
highly paid.
GAUGING THE IMPACT
Qserps can sap the health of a company's pension plan. Flatware maker
Oneida Ltd.'s pension plan suffered after the company added a QSERP in
2002. See a chronology and chart showing the liabilities and funding
of Oneida's pension plan.
SUPPLEMENTAL BENEFITS
Once a company knows how much "capacity" its pension plan has -- that
is, how much bigger it can make executive pensions without having to
raise benefits for the rank-and-file -- implementing a Qserp can be
remarkably simple. On Nov. 17, 2005, CenturyTel Inc., a Monroe, La.,
telecommunications company, amended its regular pension plan to spell
out additional pension benefits for 18 select individuals, including
at least five top executives. Chairman and Chief Executive Glen F.
Post III was promised $97,768 a year more than the pension would
otherwise have provided. The company said he gave up an equal amount
of other benefits, which were unsecured IOUs from the company, for the
Qserp benefit, which is backed by pension-plan assets. (Read
CenturyTel's filing.)
READING THE CLUES
Companies often disclose little or nothing about Qserps. A few,
including chipmaker Intel Corp., provide passing mentions in corporate
proxies or other SEC filings, though the references aren't always
clear. Read an Intel filing from last spring in which the company's
Qserp is discussed. The key section is highlighted, on page 53 of the
75-page document.
Intel's case shows how lucrative such a move can be. It involves
Intel's obligation to pay deferred compensation to executives when
they retire or leave. In 2005, the chip maker moved more than $200
million of its deferred-comp IOUs into its pension plan. Then it
contributed at least $187 million of cash to the plan.
Now, when the executives get ready to collect their deferred salaries,
Intel won't have to pay them out of cash; the pension plan will pay
them.
Normally, companies can deduct the cost of deferred comp only when
they actually pay it, often many years after the obligation is
incurred. But Intel's contribution to the pension plan was deductible
immediately. Its tax saving: $65 million in the first year. In other
words, taxpayers helped finance Intel's executive compensation.
Meanwhile, the move is enabling Intel to book as much as an extra $136
million of profit over the 10 years that began in 2005. That reflects
the investment return Intel assumes on the $187 million.
Fred Thiele, Intel's global retirement manager, said the benefit was
probably somewhat lower, because if Intel hadn't contributed this $187
million to the pension plan, it would have invested the cash or used
it in some other productive way.
The company said the move aided shareholders and didn't hurt lower-
paid employees because most don't benefit from Intel's pension plan.
Instead, they receive their retirement benefits mainly from a profit-
sharing plan, with the pension plan serving as a backup in case profit-
sharing falls short.
The result, though, is that a majority of the tax-advantaged assets in
Intel's pension plan are dedicated not to providing pensions for the
rank and file but to paying deferred compensation of the company's
most highly paid employees, roughly 4% of the work force.
On the Hook
And taxpayers are on the hook in other ways. When deferred executive
salaries and bonuses are part of a pension plan, they can be rolled
over into an Individual Retirement Account -- another tax-advantaged
vehicle.
Intel believes that its practices "feel consistent" with both the
spirit and letter of the law that gives tax benefits for providing
pensions.
Intel may be a model for what's to come. Many companies are phasing
out their pension plans, typically by "freezing" them, i.e., ending
workers' buildup of new benefits. This leaves more pension assets
available to cover executives' compensation and supplemental benefits.
A number of companies have shifted executive benefits into frozen
pension plans.
Technically, a company makes this move by increasing an executive's
benefit in the regular pension plan by X dollars and canceling X
dollars of the executive's deferred comp or supplemental pension.
CenturyTel, for instance, in 2005 moved its IOU for the supplemental
pensions of 18 top employees into its regular pension plan. Chief
Executive Glen Post's benefits in the regular pension plan jumped to
$110,000 a year from $12,000. A spokesman for the Monroe, La.,
company, which made more such transfers in 2006, was frank about its
motive: to take advantage of tax breaks by paying executive benefits
out of a tax-advantaged pension plan.
How They Do It
So how can companies boost regular pension benefits for select
executives while still passing the IRS's nondiscrimination tests?
Benefits consultants help them figure out how.
To prove they don't discriminate, companies are supposed to compare
what low-paid and high-paid employees receive from the pension plan.
They don't have to compare actual individuals; they can compare ratios
of the benefits received by groups of highly paid vs. groups of lower-
paid employees.
Such a measure creates the potential for gerrymandering -- carefully
moving employees about, in various theoretical groupings, to achieve a
desired outcome.
QUIRKY PERK
Much like other benefits-consulting firms, Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc.
markets the Qserp, or "qualified" supplemental executive retirement
plan, as a way to give top officers bigger benefits from the regular
pension plan "without [necessarily] increasing staff benefits at all."
Read a page from Watson Wyatt's Web site on the "quirky executive perk."
Another technique: Count Social Security as part of the pension. This
effectively raises low-paid employees' overall retirement benefits by
a greater percentage than it raises those of the highly paid --
enabling companies to then increase the pensions of higher-paid people.
Indeed, "it is actually these discrimination tests that give rise to
Qserp in the first place!" said materials from one consulting firm,
Watson Wyatt Worldwide. "Qserp" means "qualified supplemental
executive retirement plan" -- an industry term for a supplemental
executive pension that "qualifies" for tax breaks.
Watson Wyatt senior consultant Alan Glickstein said the firm's
calculations tell employers exactly how much disparity they can
achieve between the pensions of highly paid people and others. "At the
end, when the game is over, when the computer is cooling off, you know
whether you passed [the IRS nondiscrimination tests] or not," he said.
At that point, companies can retrofit the benefits of select
executives, feeding some into the pension plan.
They can do this even if they freeze the pension plan, because
executives' supplemental benefits and deferred comp aren't based on
the frozen pension formula.
Keeping Quiet
Generally, only the executives are aware this is being done. Benefits
consultants have advised companies to keep quiet to avoid an employee
backlash. In material prepared for employers, Robert Schmidt, a
consulting actuary with Milliman Inc., said that to "minimize this
problem" of employee relations, companies should draw up a memo
describing the transfer of supplemental executive benefits to the
pension plan and give it "only to employees who are eligible."
The IRS was also a concern for Mr. Schmidt. He advised employers that
in "dealing with the IRS," they should ask it for an approval letter,
because if the agency later cracks down, its restrictions probably
won't be retroactive.
"At some point in the future, the IRS may well take the position" that
supplemental executive pensions moved into a regular pension plan
"violate the 'spirit' of the nondiscrimination rules," Mr. Schmidt
wrote. In an interview, he confirmed his written comments.
Companies don't explicitly tell the IRS that an amendment is intended
to shift supplements executive benefits obligations into the regular
pension plan. "They hide it," a Treasury official said. "They include
the amendment with other amendments, and don't make it obvious."
With too little staffing to check the dozens of pages of actuaries'
calculations, the IRS generally accepts the companies' assurances that
their pension plans pass the discrimination tests, the official said.
"Under existing rules, there's little we can do anyway. If Congress
doesn't like it, it can change the rules." To halt the practice,
Congress would have to end the flexibility that companies now have in
meeting the IRS nondiscrimination tests.
A spokesman for the IRS said it has no idea how many such pension
amendments it has approved or how much money is involved.
A Way to Pass
Sometimes, the only tipoff that a firm is moving executive benefits
into the regular pension is that it provides small increases to some
lower-paid groups in the plan, in order to pass the nondiscrimination
tests.
Royal & SunAlliance, an insurer, sold a division and laid off its 228
employees in 1999. Just before doing so, it amended the division's
pension plan to award larger benefits to eight departing officers and
directors. One human-resources executive got an additional $5,270 a
month for life.
But to do this and still pass the IRS's nondiscrimination tests, the
company needed to give tiny pension increases to 100 lower-level
workers, said the company's benefits consultant,
PricewaterhouseCoopers. One got an increase of $1.92 a month.
Joseph Gromala, a middle manager who stood to get $8.87 more a month
at age 65, wrote to the company seeking details about higher sums
other people were receiving. A lawyer wrote back saying the company
didn't have to show him the relevant pension-plan amendment.
Mr. Gromala then sued in federal court, claiming that administrators
of the pension plan were breaching their duty to operate it in
participants' best interests. The company replied that its move was a
business decision, not a pension decision, so the fiduciary issue was
moot. The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
PricewaterhouseCoopers declined to comment. A spokesman for Royal &
SunAlliance's former U.S. operation, now called Arrowpoint Capital,
said the pension plan "wasn't discriminatory." Royal & SunAlliance
recently changed its name to RSA Insurance Group.
Pension-plan amendments like the documents Mr. Gromala sought must be
filed with the IRS, but the agency normally won't disclose specifics
such as who benefits. The IRS says it can't release details of the
amendments because they reflect individuals' benefits.
Not So Safe
Employers sometimes tell executives that moving their supplemental
pensions or deferred comp into the company pension plan will make them
more secure. Normally, supplemental pensions or deferred comp are just
unsecured promises; companies don't set aside cash for supplemental
executive pensions and deferred comp because there's no tax break for
doing so. But the promises will be backed by assets if the company can
squeeze them into a tax-advantaged pension plan.
This supposed security can prove illusory, as executives at
Consolidated Freightways found out.
The trucking firm moved most of its retirement IOUs for eight top
officers into its pension plan in late 2001. It said this would
protect most or all of their promised benefits, which ranged up to
$139,000 a year.
This came as relief to Tom Paulsen, then chief operating officer, who
says he knew the Vancouver, Wash., trucking company was on "thin ice."
But the pension plan was underfunded. And Consolidated didn't add more
assets to it when the company gave the plan new obligations. Adding
the executive IOUs thus made the plan weaker. It went from having
about 96% of the assets needed to pay promised benefits to having just
79%.
Losing Benefits
Consolidated later filed for bankruptcy and handed its pension plan
over to a government insurer, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. The
PBGC commits to paying pensions only up to certain limits. Mr. Paulsen
said he and other executives have been told they won't get their
supplemental pensions.
Some lower-level people will lose benefits, too. Chester Madison, a
middle manager who retired in 2002 after 33 years, saw his pension
fall to $20,400 a year from $49,200. Mr. Madison, 62, has taken a job
selling flooring in Sacramento, Calif.
He faults those who made the pension decisions. "I look at it as greed
and taking care of the top echelons," he says.
It's impossible to know how much the addition of executive pensions to
the pension plan contributed to the plan's failure. But in this as in
similar companies where a plan saddled with executive benefits failed
-- such as at kitchenware maker Oneida Ltd. in upstate New York --
it's clear the move weakened the plans by adding liabilities but no
assets.
A trustee for Consolidated's bankruptcy liquidation declined to
discuss details of the company's pension plan.
Mr. Madison and five other ex-employees sued Towers Perrin, a
consulting firm that had advised Consolidated on structuring its
benefits. The suit, alleging professional negligence over this and
other issues, was dismissed in late 2006 by a federal court in the
Northern District of California. Towers Perrin declined to comment.
Some companies, after moving executives' supplemental benefits into a
pension plan, now take steps to protect them. When Hartmarx Corp.
added executive obligations to its pension plan last year, it set up a
trust that automatically would be funded if the plan failed.
Glenn Morgan, the clothier's chief financial officer, said the trust
benefits nine or 10 people. "The purpose is to pay them the benefit
they've earned," he said.
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