Class Action Lawsuit May Affect Retirement Plan Allocations to Hedge Funds

Following the 2008 financial crisis, pension managers looked to hedge funds as one way of making up performance losses.  That approach may have backfired for one large corporation whose alternative pension investments stand accused of poor performance.  A former employee is the named plaintiff and class representative in a putative class action against the corporate committees and their members that were responsible for the corporation’s pension investments.  The suit charges that, by investing heavily in “risky and high-cost hedge funds and private equity investments,” and by eschewing more widely accepted pension allocation models, the defendants breached their fiduciary duties to the pension plans, which sustained “massive losses and enormous excess fees.”  This article summarizes the key allegations against the ERISA fiduciaries who elected to invest in hedge funds and other alternative investments.  For more on ERISA fiduciary duties, see the first two parts of our series entitled “Happily Ever After? – Investment Funds that Live with ERISA, For Better and For Worse”: Part One, Vol. 7, No. 33 (Sep. 4, 2014); and Part Two, Vol. 7, No. 34 (Sep. 11, 2014).

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