AT&T Faces Second Lawsuit Over Pension Plan Risk Transfer AT&T Faces Second Lawsuit Over Pension Plan Risk Transfer

<byline>By Jacklyn Wille, Legal Reporter<byline>

TRACK DOCKET: No. 1:24-cv-10656

AT&T Inc. was sued for the second time in a week by retirees who say it wrongly shifted responsibility for funding the pensions of 96,000 workers to a “highly risky” insurance company owned by private equity.

The latest proposed class action, filed March 15 in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, says AT&T offloaded more than $8 billion worth of pension benefits to subsidiaries of Athene Holding Ltd., which the retirees describe as “a private-equity controlled insurance company with a highly risky offshore structure.” This transaction caused workers to lose the federal protections of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and jeopardized their retirement savings, according to the lawsuit.

Pension de-risking transactions, in which workers are removed from a company’s pension plan in exchange for group annuity contracts purchased from an outside provider, have exploded in recent years, according to the complaint. The AT&T retirees’ lawsuit, filed by Schlichter Bogard LLP, comes four days after a different group of retirees brought a similar lawsuit against AT&T and two days after Schlichter filed suit over Lockheed Martin Corp.’s move to transfer risk in its pension plan.

Schlichter is a St. Louis-based law firm known for its lawsuits challenging 401(k) plan fees and its multimillion-dollar settlements with Boeing Co., Reliance Trust Co., ABB Inc., and others.

In the latest lawsuit, three AT&T retirees say the company breached its fiduciary duties under ERISA by failing to obtain the “safest annuity available” in the transaction. They say Athene, an Apollo Global Management subsidiary that’s not named as a defendant, invested in “lower-quality, higher-risk assets” and likely allowed AT&T to save a significant amount of money by putting workers’ retirement benefits in jeopardy.

“Putting the company’s financial interest in saving money ahead of participants’ interests in retirement security by selecting a riskier annuity provider is an egregious act of disloyalty,” the retirees said in the complaint. “By transferring Plaintiffs’ pension benefits to Athene, Defendants put AT&T retirees’ and their beneficiaries’ future retirement benefits at substantial risk of default—a risk for which they were not compensated, and which devalued their pensions.”

AT&T denied the allegations in both cases via email and said it would defend them in court.

The retirees are also represented by Naumes Law Group.

The case is Schloss v. AT&T Inc., D. Mass., No. 1:24-cv-10656, 3/15/24.

These two cases have now been combined into one.