Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation

Partner

Howard Pianko’s notable skills include all aspects of domestic and cross-border employee benefits and executive compensation. He is recognized as an expert in ERISA plan governance, domestically and internationally, and pension investments; including fiduciary governance reviews, and alternative investment by pension plans. Howard is seen as an experienced lawyer qualified to act as independent counsel in significant ERISA fiduciary matters requiring special counsel. For more than 30 years he has co-chaired leading CLE seminars on ERISA fiduciary and pension investment law. Howard also has considerable experience in the employee benefit aspects of domestic and cross-border acquisitions, divestments, spin-offs and joint ventures.

Projects that Howard has helped address include:

A unique retiree health benefit solution. The law firms working on an M&A transaction decided to set up a trust that the seller would fund at closing to satisfy its retiree health obligation. This trust was established upon closing of the deal (i.e., before there was an actual committee for the trust). Howard acted as counsel for the trust in the negotiation of the terms of the trust’s formation; and then for its implementation. A multibillion-dollar de-risking window. Howard was retained as counsel representing the pension plan involved (not the employer/sponsor) in the offering of a lump sum option to former employees participating in the pension plan. After this “window” was ended, he was retained as ongoing counsel solely with respect to matters (e.g., claim appeals) involving the administration of this very large plan. Record-keeper/fund line-up transition. After an RFP, a plan committee decided to change the record-keeper and investment line-up for its multibillion-dollar defined contribution plan. Howard was retained as counsel to achieve this transition and to effect the mapping to a new line-up within the established timeline.

International Pension & Employee Benefits Lawyers Association (1987-present) Practising Law Institute, Employee Benefits Specialty Area advisory council Thomson Reuters Practical Law advisory council