< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb

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W. Thomas Reeder Jr.
Director / Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
Last year’s rank: Not ranked

As the newly confirmed director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., W. Thomas Reeder Jr. is expected to strike a less strident tone than his predecessor Joshua Gotbaum (No. 15). Reeder, age 65, is a University of Texas School of Law graduate who has made a long trek through government. He was the benefits tax counsel in the office of tax policy in President George W. Bush’s Treasury Department, then moved to a staff job on the Senate Finance Committee and to the Internal Revenue Service under President Obama. Reeder’s ability to work both sides of the aisle helped him gain approval from a bitterly divided Congress. With the Obama administration heading into its final year, Reeder has several important jobs. First, he needs to shepherd implementation of the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014. Criticism of the legislation, however, has focused on the sorry state of the PBGC’s own balance sheet — and this leads to job No. 2. In its November 2015 annual report, released a month after Reeder’s confirmation, the PBGC reported an increase in the deficit of its single-employer program to $24.1 billion from $19.3 billion; for multiemployer plans the shortfall rose to $52.3 billion from $42.4 billion. The size of the multiemployer gap caused Moody’s Investors Service to issue a note warning, “Despite current and potential future premium increases, there will come an inflection point where plan sponsors will not be able to afford premiums and the PBGC will run out of money.” The PBGC, Moody’s said, “estimates there is a greater than 50 percent chance it will be insolvent by 2025. It further extrapolates a 90 percent chance of insolvency by 2031. In 2016, Reeder must present these uncomfortable facts to Congress and ask for an increase in PBGC premiums.

 

 
The 2015 Pension 40

1. Bruce Rauner Illinois 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation Finding, Applying for, and Winning Grant Funding: Tips for Nonprofits Sponsored by Fidelity Investments April 29, 2025 3. Chris Christie New Jersey 4. Randi Weingarten AmericanFederation of Teachers 5. Phyllis Borzi U.S. Department of Labor

6. Kevin de León California 7. Alejandro García Padilla Commonwealth ofPuerto Rico 8. Laurence Fink BlackRock 9. Rahm Emanuel Chicago 10. Sean McGarvey North AmericanBuilding Trades Unions

11. John Kline Minnesota 12. J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department 13. Damon Silvers AFL-CIO 14. Jeffrey Immelt General Electric Co. 15. Joshua Gotbaum Brookings Institution

16. Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. 17. Mark Mullet Washington 18. Terry O'Sullivan Laborers' International Union of North America 19. Raymond Dalio Bridgewater Associates 20. Ted Wheeler Oregon

21. Thomas Nyhan Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman Pensions Rights Center 23. Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee forMultiemployer Plans 24. Robert O'Keef Motorola Solutions 25. Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley

26. Kenneth Feinberg The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg 27. Orrin Hatch Utah 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University 29. Ian Lanoff Groom Law Group 30. Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business

31. Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees' Retirement System 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services 33. Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research 34. Denise Nappier Connecticut 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. Pension BenefitGuaranty Corp.

36. Hank Kim National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems 37. Paul Singer Elliott Management Corp. 38. Bailey Childers National PublicPension Coalition 39. Amy Kessler Prudential Financial 40. Judy Mares U.S. Labor Department