< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb
21
Thomas Nyhan
Executive Director / Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund
Last year’s rank: Not ranked

As executive director of the Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund, Thomas Nyhan, 63, is in the unenviable position of overseeing benefit cuts to more than 400,000 International Brotherhood of Teamsters beneficiaries, raising the wrath of the union’s president, James Hoffa, and his 1.26 million members. On September 25 the $17.8 billion fund became the first to submit a pension rescue plan to the Treasury Department under the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014. Under terms of the legislation, pension trustees must propose benefit changes; Nyhan and his trustees offered cuts of as much as 50 percent for some retirees. (Reductions hinge on age and status, with some beneficiaries expected to receive full benefits.) Treasury, working with the Department of Labor and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), has 225 days to approve the plan or send it back for review. Not surprisingly, the plan spurred protests. In a letter to Nyhan, Hoffa, who initially supported Kline-Miller before turning against it, urged Central States not to file. Nyhan, however, who has overseen the fund for 13 years, insists that drastic measures are the only way to save what remains of a fund that is taking in $1 for every $3.46 it pays out. “This is our only option,” he says, “particularly if you look at the funding status of the PBGC,” which lacks capital to bail out the multiemployer system. In a reply to Hoffa, he wrote, “Without a rescue plan the pension fund will run out of money over the next ten years and our retirees will face the prospect of having their pension benefits reduced to essentially zero.” Nyhan, an attorney, served as Central States’ general counsel for more than 25 years. Since taking the executive director’s job, he says, “I’ve been trying to find a way to stabilize the fund in some way.” As difficult as it is, this plan to reduce benefits may be his best shot.

 
The 2015 Pension 40

1. Bruce Rauner Illinois 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation Higher Taxes Could Reshape How Endowments and Foundations Think about Almost Everything Sponsored by Fidelity Investments June 16, 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. TreasuryDepartment 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