Products January 7, 2013

Pentegra Launches Q&A Tool

Pentegra Retirement Services introduced a Web tool featuring Q&A’s with Pentegra specialists.
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“Talk to a Retirement Specialist” covers a wide scope of key retirement plan design and technical issues for plan sponsors and plan advisers, including defined benefit, defined contribution and executive benefit plan design; fiduciary governance; multiple employer plans; nondiscrimination testing; retirement planning essentials; and bank-owned life insurance.

The tool also allows visitors to ask questions.

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“Our new Talk to a Retirement Specialist feature covers a broad range of topics in an easy Q&A format,” said Rich Rausser, Pentegra senior vice president of client services. “We think this type of tool will help plan sponsor clients and partners better understand the many facets of retirement plan design.”

The tool is available here.

Compliance January 4, 2013

Wyeth Settles Stock Drop Suit

Wyeth Inc. agreed to settle a class action stock drop lawsuit.

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The pharmaceutical company will pay $2,000,000 to end the suit alleging it breached its fiduciary duty under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) by offering inflated company stock in three employee retirement plans.

The plaintiffs, Carlos M. Herrera and other plan participants, said the company should have known the stock was not a prudent investment and acted imprudently by not preventing further investment. While investors expected Wyeth to come to market with a drug called Pristiq, the plaintiffs alleged the company knew of clinical studies that called Pristiq’s effectiveness into question.

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Wyeth’s stock tumbled after the company announced that the Food and Drug Administration had designated Pristiq as “approvable” for treatment of vasomotor symptoms – an intermediate step between the agency’s final approval and a rejection. On hearing the news, investors sent the company’s stock price down 10%, from $56 per share to $50, and it kept falling during the class period, to a low of $38.

A federal judge had tossed out the lawsuit in April 2010, but the plaintiffs appealed. (See “Wyeth Walks Off with Stock Drop Win.”)

The proposed settlement, given preliminary approval by the court January 3, is here.

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