Employees at a handful of companies seeking to recover losses after their employers admitted to backdating stock option grants illegally are exploring a potentially powerful avenue: the federal ERISA statute.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act requires a laundry list of compliance obligations on companies to help protect workers’ retirement monies. It also imposes fiduciary responsibilities on the overseers of company retirement plans, and now backdating lawsuits are using that fiduciary duty clause to put company executives in their crosshairs.
