Bristol-Myers Sued Over $2 Billion Pension Annuity Transfer
September 10, 2024 by Jacklyn Wille
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. was sued by a former employee who says the pharmaceutical company jeopardized workers’ retirement benefits by offloading $2 billion in pension liabilities to an annuity provider he describes as “highly risky.”
The proposed class action challenges a 2019 transaction in which Bristol-Myers allegedly removed thousands of plan participants by purchasing group annuity contracts from subsidiaries of Athene Holding Ltd.
Wink’s Moore on the Market: I don’t subscribe to Bloomberg Law, but it sounds like Bristol-Myers Squibb transferred their pension into a group annuity, and now they are being sued for it.
Here’s more:
“Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. was sued by a former employee who says the pharmaceutical company jeopardized workers’ retirement benefits by offloading $2 billion in pension liabilities to an annuity provider he describes as ‘highly risky.’
The proposed class action challenges a 2019 transaction in which Bristol-Myers allegedly removed thousands of plan participants by purchasing group annuity contracts from subsidiaries of Athene Holding Ltd. This “massive risk transfer” from the company to workers was aimed at providing Bristol-Myers with millions of dollars in economic gain while ejecting workers from the protections of the federal pension regime and the backstop provided by the …” -sjm
