Rick Arenburg's employee benefits practice spans the full range of benefit matters, from all types of employee benefit plans to executive compensation and mergers and acquisition issues to non-profit and ERISA specialty matters. Mr. Arenburg's clients include Fortune 500 companies and their affiliates, other publicly and privately held companies and foreign entities with U.S. operations.
In the employee benefits plan area, Mr. Arenburg advises clients on the design and implementation of, and ongoing administrative issues with, tax-qualified and nonqualified retirement plans, health and other welfare benefit plans and compensatory programs involving the use of employer stock or other performance measures. In addition, he negotiates contracts with service providers to employee benefit plans, including trust agreements, administrative services agreements, annuity contracts and performance guarantee agreements. Mr. Arenburg also represents clients before the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Labor in connection with audits in both voluntary and involuntary compliance situations.
In the executive compensation area, Mr. Arenburg assists clients in negotiating employment agreements, severance agreements, change-in-control-agreements and other similar arrangements with incoming, existing and departing executives. He also designs and implements executive-level, long-term incentives, including the use of private options and option deferral techniques.
In the mergers and acquisitions area, Mr. Arenburg negotiates the employee benefit aspects of mergers and acquisitions. He also performs due diligence to identify "hidden" benefit liabilities as well as assists surviving entities with the integration and consolidation of employee benefit programs.
In the non-profit and ERISA specialty areas, Mr. Arenburg's services include assisting non-profit organizations in compensating key executives in a manner consistent with private inurement and other federal tax restrictions, assisting venture capital funds and pension plan investors and pension funds and business partners in jointly conducting business while minimizing ERISA complications, and assisting clients in seeking available exemptions from the U.S. Department of Labor for transactions between plans and related parties that otherwise would be prohibited under ERISA's broad conflicts of interest rules.
