ERISA and hedge funds

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) is a complex piece of legislation dealing with the establishment, operation, and administration of employee benefit plans. The U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) is the federal agency primarily responsible for administering and enforcing ERISA. ERISA is designed to protect plan beneficiaries and participants from problems and abuses such as unfunded plans, excessively difficult vesting provisions, or misuse of plan assets by parties related to the plan. ERISA seeks to achieve its purposes by imposing, among other things, numerous obligations on fiduciaries as well as by prohibiting many transactions that can raise conflict of interest issues (so‐called “prohibited transactions”). In corresponding provisions, the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 imposes taxes and penalties for these prohibited transactions.