Kevin Noble advises employers, fiduciaries, and service providers on issues important to employee benefit plans and the employers who sponsor them. This includes resolving issues connected to legacy liabilities that present complex benefit plan and corporate finance issues, such as pension de-risking and retiree health settlements. Kevin represented General Motors, Verizon, Motorola, Timken, and other corporate plan sponsors in settlements of more than $56 billion in pension plan liabilities. These transactions have included the largest plan termination, annuity contract purchase, and pension de-risking actions in history.
Kevin regularly counsels clients on matters involving fiduciary responsibility, plan governance, and plan investments. This has included matters involving plan fees, prohibited transactions, employer stock, new and developing issues (such as missing participants and the DOL fiduciary rule), and he has negotiated collectively bargained benefits at the bargaining table. He has litigated claims involving the Employee Retirement Income Security Act's (ERISA) fiduciary duty and prohibited transaction provisions, actuarial equivalency challenges, benefit cutback disputes, top hat and other executive benefits, claim denials, plan interpretations, employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) valuations, and 401(k) plan investments. He is experienced in settling retiree health liabilities, including the landmark decision by General Motors to transfer retiree health obligations to an independent Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association (VEBA). He has represented clients before the Labor Department, Internal Revenue Service, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in plan audits, investigations, exemptions, and regulatory guidance projects.
Kevin is a board member of the American Benefits Council and is the author of a chapter in Bloomberg BNA's ERISA Fiduciary Law treatise.
Experience
Additional Speaking Engagements
- February 23, 2017
Implications of the Department of Labor's New Fiduciary Rule for the Financial Services Advisory Business and What's Next - October 6, 2016
ACA Compliance Group's Regulatory Horizon Forum, DOL Fiduciary Rule - March 22, 2016
Pension Annuity Settlements: Why Are There So Many People Involved?, Aon Hewitt Webinar - January 10, 2014
American Benefits Council: Pension Plan De-Risking, Benefits Briefing Webinar - October 23, 2012
Pension De-Risking, District of Columbia Bar program
- George Mason University (J.D. cum laude 2003; Articles Editor, Federal Circuit Bar Journal; Vice Justice, Moot Court Board); University of Virginia (B.A. 2000)
- District of Columbia and New York
The Best Lawyers in America (2021-2024) — Employee Benefits; Litigation-ERISA
Legal 500 United States (2016) — Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation; Workplace and Employment Counseling