by Kevin McBride | Mar 10, 2023
What happened at Silicon Valley Bank? What caused a run on the bank’s deposits? The short answer is…a liquidity problem caused by mismarking asset values used for loan collateral in a climate of rising interest rates. Here is a quick review of what...
by Kevin McBride | Mar 7, 2023
Plan fiduciaries are required to do an asset write-down of the fair value of an asset has has dropped. (See, Hughes v. Northwestern University) Otherwise, an asset’s value may be over-stated and you may not know what your 401k plan is actually worth. But the...
by Kevin McBride | Feb 15, 2023
FAIR VALUE Pension assets must be valued and reported at “fair value.” The goal, of course, is to categorize each asset by its characteristics and risks, so that value can be most readily understood and acted upon by (a) plan fiduciaries in making...
by Kevin McBride | Dec 28, 2022
A major focus of this ERISA blog is to highlight the differences between standard pension investments (such as mutual funds) and alternative investments–discussed below. Standard pension investments trade on a public exchange at a publicly-disclosed fair market...
by Kevin McBride | Nov 29, 2022
Many pension plans deceptively use “net asset value” for valuing plan assets–and therefore do not present a fair picture of “fair value.” This means that if you need to access money in your pension account, you might have much less money...