Loeb & Loeb’s Executive Compensation and Employee Benefit Practice offers clients the sophisticated advice required for the implementation, management, administration, and termination of executive compensation arrangements and employee pension and benefit plans. We help clients understand the scope and limitations of both tax-qualified plans and non-qualified retirement and deferred compensation plans, as well as welfare benefit plans and programs. Our practice serves employers and plan sponsors, plan fiduciaries, investment managers, banks, insurance companies, business associations, not-for-profit institutions, buyers and sellers of businesses, lenders, borrowers, investors, and individual executives.
Executive Compensation
We advise clients in sophisticated employment negotiations, executive engagements and terminations, and severance arrangements, with an emphasis on preventing disputes. Our experience includes issues related to noncompetition and non-solicitation agreements; the use of trade secrets and other confidential information; interference with business relations; and entitlement to bonuses, golden parachutes, and other compensation.
We design and implement equity compensation arrangements for senior executives and employees through long- and short-term incentive plans and non-qualified stock options, restricted stock, stock appreciation rights, profits interests, phantom stock arrangements, and other incentives. We also address repricing, assumption, liquidation, and other adjustment issues that arise as a company goes through various economic phases.
Our practice advises clients regarding tax, Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), labor, securities, bankruptcy and estate planning issues relating to non-qualified deferred compensation arrangements and supplemental retirement plans. We have extensive experience in conforming all types of compensation arrangements to the requirements of Internal Revenue Code Section 409A and advising clients on administrative compliance and corrections.
We are particularly well versed in the funding of non-qualified deferred compensation arrangements through rabbi trusts and/or corporate-owned life insurance products, including variable and universal life insurance products.
Our experience also includes designing and structuring life, disability, and long-term care plans, including split-dollar life insurance, and combo or carve-out life insurance and long-term disability plans.
In addition, we advise compensation committees regarding director responsibilities, charters, and oversight of executive compensation. We also provide advice on compensation and benefit issues arising in the context of mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate events.
Employee Benefits
Loeb & Loeb attorneys assist employers in all aspects of their employee benefit plans. We design and draft plans, prepare plan documentation, and assist our clients in navigating complex reporting and disclosure requirements. We advise clients on funding, liability, and withdrawal liability issues under their own plans and also under union-sponsored multiemployer plans.
Our clients look to us for advice on the establishment, negotiation, and operation of appropriate funding mechanisms, including individual and master trusts, rabbi trusts, secular trusts, VEBAs, and insurance-based arrangements. We also design, document, and counsel on issues relating to equity-based compensation plans, golden parachute contracts, and limitations on the deductibility of excessive remuneration. With our counsel, clients have realized significant cash flow savings through the implementation of “early retirement window plans,” the reallocation of surplus pension plan assets, the reduction or termination of retiree welfare plans, and the creative use of insurance-based products. We also assist clients whose plans are policyholders in demutualizing mutual insurance companies.
In addition to obtaining advisory opinions from the U.S. Department of Labor and private letter rulings from the Internal Revenue Service for our clients, we help them respond to IRS and DOL audits.
