LABOR SECRETARY NAMES CHAIRS FOR ERISA ADVISORY COUNCIL

Archived News Release — Caution: Information may be out of date.

Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman today named Barbara A. Uberti of Wilmington, Del. as chair of the Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans and Dr. Thomas J. Mackell, Jr. of Santa Fe, N.M. and New York City as its vice chair.

The Council will convene its first meeting on Feb. 24 when the two will assume their leadership positions and the council’s five newest members will be sworn in. The Council also will decide the topics to be studied during 1999. The meeting will take place at 1:30 p.m. in the Secretary’s Conference Room S-2508 at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Frances Perkins Building at 200 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20210.

Appointed as the corporate trust representative in 1997, Uberti is in her final year of a three-year secretarial appointment. She was chair of the Council’s 1998 working group on retirement plan leakage and vice chair of the 1997 working group which studied employer assets in employer-sponsored ERISA plans.

An ERISA attorney and a certified retirement services professional, Uberti manages the institutional employee benefits trust division for the Wilmington Trust Company, a trustee to over 1,000 qualified employee benefit plans with more than $25 billion in assets. Uberti also chaired the inaugural board of advisors of the American Banker Association’s national employee benefits trust school in Evanston, Ill., and is an adjunct professor of business law at the University of Delaware.

Mackell, senior consultant of Simms Capital Management, Inc. of Greenwich, Conn., is a general public representative and chaired the Council’s 1998 small business working group. President of the Association of Benefit Administrators in New York and editor of its newsletter, he is a member of the ethics committee of the Investment Management Consultants’ Association and of the investment management committee of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

New members to be installed include Janie Greenwood-Harris of St. Louis, Mo., senior trust counsel for Mercantile BanCorporation, and Judith Mazo of Washington, D.C. senior vice president and director of research for the Segal Company, who previously filled two unexpired one-year terms during 1998: Rebecca Miller of Rochester, Minn., a partner and tax law specialist with McGladrey & Pullen, LLP; Patrick J. McTeague of West Bath, Maine, semi-retired from the firm he helped found in 1976, McTeague, Higbee, MacAdam, Case, Watson & Cohen, and Michael J. Stapley of Bountiful, Utah, president and chief executive officer of Deseret Mutual Insurance Company and Deseret Mutural Benefit Administrators (DMBA) and a trustee for Deseret Healthcare Employee Benefits Trust in Salt Lake City.

Other returning members of the Council are Judith Calder of Glencoe, Ill., chief executive officer of Abacus Financial Group; Richard Tani of Mount Prospect, Ill., recently retired as a consultant with William M. Mercer, Inc.; Michael Gulotta of Annandale, N.J., president/chief executive officer of Actuarial Sciences Associates; Eddie C. Brown of Glen Arm, Md., president of Brown Capital Management; and Rose Mary Abelson of Hermosa Beach, Cal., assistant treasurer and director of investments and trust management for Northrup Grumman Corp.; J. Kenneth Blackwell of Cincinnati, who until his election in November as the secretary of state for Ohio served as the state’s treasurer; Michael R. Fanning, chief executive officer of the Central Pension Fund, International Union of Operating Engineers and Participating Employers; and Neil M. Grossman, with William M. Mercer Co. Fanning and Grossman reside in the Washington area.

Individuals or organizations wishing to attend the Feb. 24 meeting and/or to introduce possible topics for the Council to study during 1999 should contact Sharon Morrissey, executive secretary, ERISA Advisory Council, U.S. Department of Labor, Suite N-5677, 200 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 20210 before Feb. 20. Oral presentations will be limited to 5 minutes, but witnesses may submit extended statements for the record.

Members of the public who do not wish to testify before the group, but who want their statements included as part of the official proceedings may submit 20 copies of their statements to the above address. Individuals with disabilities who wish to attend the sessions and need special accommodations also should contact the department by Feb. 20 at the address above.

The advisory council, comprised of 15 members named by the Secretary of Labor and representing various segments of the employee benefits community, studies employee benefit issues and submits policy recommendations concerning the implementation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

This information will be made available to sensory impaired individuals upon request. Voice phone call (202) 219-8921 TDD phone 1-800-326-2577.

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Archived News Release — Caution: Information may be out of date.

Contact Name: Sharon Morrissey
Phone Number: (202) 219-8921