President Donald Trump’s pick to oversee Americans’ retirement savings wants to protect employers and retirement fund managers from lawsuits alleging they mismanaged workers’ savings and fleeced retirees with exorbitant fees — a regulatory rollback from which his company could profit.
Daniel Aronowitz, Trump’s Labor Department nominee to oversee the retirement and benefits accounts of more than 150 million Americans, is the president of an insurance company that provides liability coverage to employers and retirement fund managers at risk of being sued for squandering retirees’ savings.
Fewer lawsuits against Aronowitz’s customers means fewer payouts that his company would have to cover — even if that means less money for retirees.
Aronowitz’s company, Encore Fiduciary (formerly Euclid), which he founded in 2011, insures an undisclosed list of major employers and other financial firms. Under its auspices, he’s led a years-long legal crusade against what he calls “frivolous” lawsuits by retirees and workers against employer-sponsored pension funds and 401(k) retirement plans for squandering their savings.
In particular, he’s proposed halting what he characterizes as an onslaught of litigation targeting fund managers for collecting exorbitantly high fees that cut into retirees’ nest eggs. Those lawsuits, Aronowitz claims, have hampered his industry, throwing it into a supposed “crisis.”
He’s also pushed to allow 401(k) plans to invest in private equity — a longtime dream of private equity billionaires but a move that consumer and retiree advocates have been fighting to prevent.
Trump nominated Aronowitz to head the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), which is housed within the Department of…
Auteur: Katya Schwenk
