Alert Update: First Circuit Court of Appeals Concludes That Private Equity Funds Can Be Liable for Portfolio Company Pension Obligations
In December 2012, we published an Alert after a Federal District Court concluded that: (1) a private equity fund was not a “trade or business” for purposes of determining whether the fund could be liable under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“
ERISA”) for the pension obligations of one of its portfolio companies and (2) consequently, the private equity fund could not be liable for its portfolio company’s pension obligations under Title IV of ERISA, even if the fund and the portfolio company were part of the same “controlled group.” Our December Alert, which contains background on the issue and a summary of the state of the law through December 2012, may be found
here.
This Alert Update is to advise that the First Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the 2012 Federal District Court opinion.