Steve is the Firm’s West Coast employee benefits practice leader. He serves as primary outside retirement and welfare plan counsel for numerous Fortune 500 clients, handling all legal aspects of design, compliance, administrative, fiduciary and other plan functions.  In addition, Steve is a practice leader in assisting clients with M&A transactions and the negotiation of vendor, trustee and other third party benefits contracts.  Clients describe Steve as quick and creative, with the ability to translate complicated legal analysis into practical business solutions and opportunities.

• Steve has advised clients with respect to employee benefit matters in scores of acquisitions, dispositions, spin-offs, IPOs and other corporate transactions, many of them multi-billion dollar deals.  He has assisted with everything from populating the data room, to due diligence, to negotiating the purchase/sale agreement, to supporting all aspects of the benefits transition.
• Steve was once recognized in Corporate Counsel magazine for his role in a particularly unusual and creative corporate disposition.
• Steve recently convinced an IRS review team to issue one of the first favorable determination letters on a complicated cash balance pension plan design.
• Steve has been the lead or sole negotiator on more than 100 recordkeeping, consulting, trustee and other benefits vendor service agreements.
• Steve also has a demonstrated record of offering creative solutions. When the Department of Labor asserted multi-million dollar penalties upon U.S. multinational employers and a foreign government for alleged failure to file annual employee benefit plan Forms 5500, Steve was retained by the foreign government to find a creative solution. Working with the foreign government’s Secretary of Labor, the DOL, IRS and Department of State, Steve created a U.S.-based Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) and successfully negotiated the withdrawal of all penalty assertions.