< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
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John and Laura Arnold
Co-founders
Laura and John Arnold Foundation
Last year: 3
Pension policy was not something John Arnold, 40, gave much thought to during his days as an energy trader at now-defunct Enron Corp. Nor were pensions on his mind during the years when he ran his own natural-gas-focused hedge fund. That changed after Arnold and his wife, Laura, a former corporate attorney, founded the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in 2008 in their hometown, Houston, and the next year signed the Giving Pledge, agreeing to donate half their fortune in their lifetimes. Pension reform quickly became a pillar of the foundation, with the Arnolds funding pro-reform candidates and ballot initiatives through their political contributions. “We as a foundation get drawn to issues where actors who are involved in shaping public policy have interests that differ from good long-term public policy,” says John Arnold, who majored in mathematics and economics at Vanderbilt University. Pension reform “is an issue that does not have a natural advocate because the cost is dispersed across society as a whole and the benefit goes to a concentrated few.” Arnold says he grew more passionate about the need for pension reform after reading Steven Greenhut’s 2009 book, Plunder: How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation. Over the past four years, as the foundation has played an active role in states like Illinois, Kentucky and Rhode Island, in some cases in partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts, Arnold has come under criticism from labor, which sees a deep-pocketed billionaire taking away its entitlements. The Arnolds counter that they are trying to help workers by forging an equitable and sustainable retirement system for all.
The 2014 Pension 40
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Bruce Rauner Illinois | John and Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers | Rahm Emanuel Chicago | David Boies Boies, Schiller & Flexner |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees’ Retirement System | John Kline Minnesota | J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department | Gina Raimondo Rhode Island | Phyllis Borzi U.S. Labor Department |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Amy Kessler Prudential Financial | Alejandro García Padilla Puerto Rico | Christopher Klein U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia | Steven Rhodes Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan | Kevin de León California |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| David Draine Pew Charitable Trusts | Jordan Marks National Public Pension Coalition | Sam Liccardo California | Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business | Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman Pension Rights Center |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Timothy Blake Moody’s Investors Service | Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University | Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services | Daniel Loeb Third Point | Judy Mares Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Andrew Biggs American Enterprise Institute | Andy Stern Columbia University | Kenneth Mehlman KKR & Co. | Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research | A. Melissa Moye U.S. Treasury Department |
