Reuters and Law360: GE Workers Win Back $61 Million for Alleged Mismanagement of Retirement Funds

General Electric will pay $61 million to resolve claims that an underperforming employee retirement plan managed by a former subsidiary cost GE workers millions of dollars, as highlighted in Reuters and Law360. 

On March 8, 2024, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani approved the recovery, noting our team’s “diligent advocacy” in the case.  

The case concerns allegations that GE violated its fiduciary duties under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 by forcing workers to select underperforming funds offered by GE’s own asset management subsidiary if they wanted to invest in actively managed portfolios. GE allegedly retained the underperforming funds to inflate the sale price of its subsidiary and collect tens of millions of dollars in fees. GE then allegedly sold the subsidiary for hundreds of millions of dollars and used the proceeds of the sale to pay down debt GE owed to its underfunded defined benefit plan. 

The $61 million settlement is the largest ever in an ERISA case alleging a retirement plan improperly offered proprietary funds. 

“This is a great and historic result for the class. The defendants’ alleged mismanagement of the plan containing their employees’ hard-earned savings was unacceptable, and the lead plaintiffs fought with courage and tenacity against a major corporation for six years to secure justice,” said partner Evan J. Kaufman, who served as one of the lead counsel for the class. 

Plan participants represented by Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP and co-counsel prosecuted the case for nearly six years before reaching the settlement, largely defeating defendants’ motion to dismiss, conducting extensive fact and expert discovery, and achieving certification of a class of approximately 212,000 plan participants allegedly harmed by defendants’ conduct. The settlement received preliminary approval on October 20, 2023 and final approval on March 8, 2024. 

Robbins Geller and co-counsel represented the class. Our team was led by Samuel H. Rudman, Jonah H. Goldstein, Evan J. Kaufman, and Magdalene Economou. 

Read the Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/ge-will-pay-61-million-settle-lawsuit-over-affiliated-401k-fund-2023-10-09/ 

Read the Law360 article (login required): https://www.law360.com/articles/1811433/-61m-deal-gets-final-ok-in-ge-in-house-401-k-fund-suit- 

About Robbins Geller  

Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP is one of the world’s leading complex litigation firms, representing plaintiffs in securities fraud, shareholder derivative, antitrust, corporate takeover, and consumer fraud and privacy cases. With 200 lawyers in 10 offices, Robbins Geller is one of the world’s largest plaintiffs’ firms, and the Firm’s attorneys have obtained many of the largest securities, antitrust, and consumer class action recoveries in history.  

The Firm is ranked #1 on the most recent ISS Securities Class Action Services Top 50 Report for recovering more than $1.75 billion for investors in 2022 – the third year in a row Robbins Geller tops the list. And in those three years alone, Robbins Geller recovered nearly $5.3 billion for investors, more than double the amount recovered by any other plaintiffs’ firm. The Firm secured the largest-ever securities fraud class action settlement – $7.2 billion – in In re Enron Corp. Securities Litigation.  

For more information, please email us at media@rgrdlaw.com or call us at (619) 338-3821. 

In re GE ERISA Litig., No. 1:17-cv-12123 (D. Mass.).