< 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


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1. Bruce Rauner
Illinois

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2. John & Laura Arnold
Laura and John Arnold Foundation

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3. Chris Christie
New Jersey

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4. Randi Weingarten
AmericanFederation of Teachers

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5. Phyllis Borzi
U.S. Department of Labor

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6. Kevin de León
California

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7. Alejandro García Padilla
Commonwealth ofPuerto Rico

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8. Laurence Fink
BlackRock

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9. Rahm Emanuel
Chicago

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10. Sean McGarvey
North AmericanBuilding Trades Unions

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11. John Kline
Minnesota

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12. J. Mark Iwry
U.S. TreasuryDepartment

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13. Damon Silvers
AFL-CIO

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14. Jeffrey Immelt
General Electric Co.

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15. Joshua Gotbaum
Brookings Institution

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16. Robin Diamonte
United Technologies Corp.

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17. Mark Mullet
Washington

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18. Terry O'Sullivan
Laborers' International Union of North America

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19. Raymond Dalio
Bridgewater Associates

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20. Ted Wheeler
Oregon

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21. Thomas Nyhan
Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund

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22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman
Pensions Rights Center

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23. Randy DeFrehn
National Coordinating Committee forMultiemployer Plans

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24. Robert O'Keef
Motorola Solutions

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25. Caitlin Long
Morgan Stanley

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26. Kenneth Feinberg
The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg

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27. Orrin Hatch
Utah

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28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University

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29. Ian Lanoff
Groom Law Group

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30. Joshua Rauh
Stanford Graduate School of Business

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31. Ted Eliopoulos
California Public Employees' Retirement System

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32. Edward (Ted) Siedle
Benchmark Financial Services

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33. Teresa Ghilarducci
New School for Social Research

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34. Denise Nappier
Connecticut

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35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr.
Pension BenefitGuaranty Corp.

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36. Hank Kim
National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems

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37. Paul Singer
Elliott Management Corp.

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38. Bailey Childers
National PublicPension Coalition

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39. Amy Kessler
Prudential Financial

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40. Judy Mares
U.S. Labor Department