< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
5
David Boies
Chairman
Boies, Schiller & Flexner
Last year: 5
David Boies has been busy of late, but what else is new? The superstar litigator and chairman of New York law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner has represented former American International Group chairman Maurice (Hank) Greenberg in his suit against the federal government for its bailout of AIG. Greenberg contends that the government ripped off AIG shareholders when it bailed out the insurer in 2008. The AIG suit is hardly the only high-profile case in which Boies, 73, has taken a star turn. He was one of the lead attorneys in the case that argued gay marriage before the Supreme Court, prosecuted Microsoft Corp. for antitrust violations and represented former vice president Al Gore in 2000’s Bush v. Gore. A case that has been simmering in the background throughout 2014 is Boies’s defense of Rhode Island’s pension reforms implemented in the 2011 Retirement Security Act. After the act passed the legislature, public employee unions sued to overturn the bill, which cut benefits, reduced the cost-of-living adjustment and added a 401(k). Boies, representing the Employees’ Retirement System of Rhode Island, joined the case after talking to Gina Raimondo (No. 14), then the state’s general treasurer, now governor-elect. The two sides came close to settling in February 2014, but some holdouts objected. The parties in the case are due back in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Sarah Taft-Carter in early December, when a trial date could be set.
The 2014 Pension 40
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Bruce Rauner Illinois | John and Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers | Rahm Emanuel Chicago | David Boies Boies, Schiller & Flexner |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees’ Retirement System | John Kline Minnesota | J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department | Gina Raimondo Rhode Island | Phyllis Borzi U.S. Labor Department |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Amy Kessler Prudential Financial | Alejandro García Padilla Puerto Rico | Christopher Klein U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia | Steven Rhodes Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan | Kevin de León California |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| David Draine Pew Charitable Trusts | Jordan Marks National Public Pension Coalition | Sam Liccardo California | Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business | Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman Pension Rights Center |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Timothy Blake Moody’s Investors Service | Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University | Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services | Daniel Loeb Third Point | Judy Mares Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Andrew Biggs American Enterprise Institute | Andy Stern Columbia University | Kenneth Mehlman KKR & Co. | Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research | A. Melissa Moye U.S. Treasury Department |
