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The 2015 Pension 40: Robert O’Keef

No. 24 Robert O’Keef, Treasurer / Motorola Solutions

By Tyler Davies

December 22, 2015

< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb

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