< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb

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Robert O’Keef
Treasurer / Motorola Solutions
Last year’s rank: Not ranked

In 2012, when Robert O’Keef took on the job of treasurer at Motorola Solutions, he realized the data and telecommunications company had to resolve its pension deficit problem. “I grew up in the GM treasurer’s office,” says O’Keef, who worked at the automaker for nearly a decade. “I grew up very familiar with the issues” of managing a company with an outsize defined benefit pension plan. The former General Motors Corp. spent years grappling with a mounting pension problem before filing for bankruptcy in 2009. In 2011, Motorola, which had closed its pension to new employees in 2008, split in two, with the renamed Motorola Solutions spinning off the cell phone business as Motorola Mobility. For Motorola Solutions and its investors, including activist hedge fund manager ValueAct Capital, which owns a 10 percent stake, the balance-sheet and liability challenges were relatively unknown at the time of the spin-off, with the company supporting accrued pension liabilities with less revenue. O’Keef, 45, believed the best approach was for Motorola Solutions to move a significant portion of the $11 billion pension liability off its balance sheet. In September 2014 the company announced that Prudential Financial had agreed to take on $3.2 billion of the pension obligation; Motorola Solutions itself raised $1.1 billion to pay into the pension plan. The company offered lump-sum payments to 320,000 beneficiaries, with the overall payout capped at $1 billion. O’Keef worked with a team that included Morgan Stanley’s Caitlin Long (No. 25), Prudential’s Amy Kessler (No. 39) and Aon Hewitt’s Ari Jacobs to execute the transaction, which was completed in less than four months. Today the company’s pension obligations stand at some $6.5 billion, about 75 percent funded. O’Keef has become an evangelist for the risk transfer movement, helping to “deliver the playbook” to other companies struggling with their pensions.

 

 
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