Yet another plaintiff has filed suit on behalf of current and former participants in the JPMorgan Chase 401(k) Savings Plan.
Plaintiff William Stirsman says he wants to “…redress losses to the Plan, obtain Plan-wide injunctive relief, and secure disgorgement of unjust profits” that he says are “the result of conflicted and imprudent and disloyal decisions by Defendants with respect to the selection and retention of investment options in the Plan and the investment of the Plan’s assets.”
In most respects this suit alleges the same issues as the two that preceded it: that half of all Plan investment options were affiliated with JPMorgan entities, while “more than 70% were affiliated with either JPMorgan or BlackRock,” and that the $20 billion JPMorgan plan should have been able to strike a better deal for its participants. It also attempts to make the case that inquiries by the OCC and the SEC into business practices where JP Morgan had improperly funneled client assets into JPMorgan-affiliated funds rather than third-party investment options in order to generate investment fees led the bank to eventually reduce the fees charged by its proprietary funds and by BlackRock funds to plan beneficiaries, in some cases eliminating these investment options altogether.
The latest suit was, as were the two previous suits, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, albeit by a different law firm (ERISA litigator Keller Rohrback, LLP).
