Manatt’s Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits practice provides advice and services on a broad range of matters. Given the complex and interdisciplinary nature of the laws and regulations governing executive compensation and employee benefits (including tax laws, securities laws and exchange listing rules, ERISA, and other health and welfare regulations), the counsel of knowledgeable and experienced professionals is critical to any business. Manatt’s attorneys possess both the deep subject matter knowledge and the sophisticated experience necessary to provide best-in-class services in these areas.
Corporate Transactions
Our attorneys play an integral role in a wide variety of business transactions, from entity formation to mergers and acquisitions, including private equity and capital markets transactions. The Manatt Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits attorneys work closely with the Firm’s Tax attorneys, taking a fully integrated approach as a means to maximize the tax efficiency of the initial delivery, exit and continuation of executive incentives and employee benefit programs post transaction.
Executive Compensation
Our attorneys provide executive compensation advice on a range of issues from the tax-efficient delivery of executive remuneration to public company disclosures, including advising on and preparing Form 8-Ks, CD&As, say on pay and pay versus performance disclosures, and everything in between. We represent boards of directors and compensation committees, senior executives, business entities, private equity funds, hedge funds and other investment vehicles. We have extensive experience designing and advising on executive compensation arrangements such as equity- and non-equity-based incentive plans, annual bonus programs, non-qualified deferred compensation plans, severance and change-in-control arrangements, and executive employment agreements, including the more exotic programs such as split-dollar life insurance arrangements. Our attorneys also have compensation consulting experience, including compensation benchmarking, analytics and advising on market pay trends, experience not typically found at a national law firm.
Employee Benefits
Our attorneys have extensive experience advising employers, plan sponsors, plan fiduciaries and plan trustees in connection with all aspects of qualified retirement plans and health and welfare benefits in the context of single, multiple and multi-employer plans. We serve as regular advisers to Taft-Hartley boards of trustees with respect to their investment oversight and administration of collectively bargained plans.
We have assisted numerous clients with benefit plans that have been discovered to be operating out of compliance by filing plan corrections with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) through the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System and with the Department of Labor (DOL) through its Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program. We also have extensive experience representing clients whose plans are being investigated for compliance by the IRS and the DOL.