Jack Eckart has been a member of the Ropes & Gray Benefits Consulting Group since 2014. Jack has extensive experience with qualified benefit plans, ERISA fiduciary issues, and ACA compliance matters. He advises a wide range of clients on all aspects of their retirement, health and welfare, and executive compensation arrangements, including developing and maintaining cost-effective, compliant, and competitive benefit plans.
In addition to his ongoing clients, Jack focuses on employee benefit matters in the context of mergers and acquisitions. He works closely with the firm’s private equity and corporate transactional groups in developing and implementing pre/post-close benefit plan strategies/solutions and identifying potential benefit plan related liabilities.
Jack also works with the firm’s executive compensation practice on the benchmarking of management equity programs and has assisted in developing and maintaining Ropes & Gray’s proprietary management equity database for private equity sponsors. In addition, he has experience analyzing golden parachute payments under section 280G of the Internal Revenue Code.
Experience
- Strategic Planning: Jack helps plan sponsors, administrators and fiduciaries assess their benefit plan budget and the structure of their benefit plans. He works with his clients to develop and maintain a multi-year benefits strategy and analyzes the current benefit plans for appropriateness and cost effectiveness while considering industry and local benchmarks. On behalf of Jack’s clients, he also regularly prepares votes and related materials and presents for his clients at executive management and board meetings.
- Plan Administration: Jack frequently provides guidance on all aspects of day-to-day retirement and health and welfare plan administration – e.g., assisting with qualified domestic relations orders and cafeteria plan election changes, reviewing vendor contracts and participant communications, and guiding plan sponsors in the preparation and distribution of summary plan descriptions and other benefits-related disclosures.
- RFPs for Third-Party Service Providers: Jack represents clients during RFPs, including RFPs for record-keepers, third-party administrators (TPAs), health & welfare insurers, actuarial firms, and investment advisers. Jack spearheads the development and administration of the RFP process and assists with drafting the RFPs, vendor searches, negotiations, reviewing agreements, and the implementation of the vendors. Jack has represented clients during RFPs that have resulted in significant savings for our clients and their employees.
- Regulatory Compliance: Jack regularly works with clients on:
- Maintaining qualified retirement plans with applicable IRS and DOL requirements;
- Maintaining health & welfare benefits with applicable ERISA, COBRA, HIPPA, ACA and the Internal Revenue Code requirements;
- Governmental filings, such as determination letter applications, Form 5500s, and ACA reporting; and
- Various correction procedures under the IRS Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System, the DOL Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program and the DOL’s Delinquent Filer Voluntary Compliance Program.
- Ropes & Gray’s Proprietary Management Equity Database: Jack is part of the firm’s team that has developed and provided dozens of customized management equity program benchmarking reports for key private equity clients.
- Representative corporate transactions in which Jack has advised on benefit-related matters include:
- Advising TPG Capital on a variety of matters, including its:
- $1.8 billion simultaneous carve-out of AT&T’s U.S. video business (DIRECTV) and investment in the newly carved out business
- $4 billion carve-out acquisition of Boomi, a provider of cloud-based integration platform as a service (iPaaS), from Dell Technologies
- minority investment in AnovoRx, a provider of pharmacy services for patients, health care providers, payers, and manufacturers
- Advising Aquiline Capital Partners on its carve-out acquisition of Avel eCare (formerly Avera eCare), the telemedicine services unit, from Avera Health
- Advising Gauge Capital on its acquisition of Exigo Office, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for direct selling companies
- Advising Audax Group on its acquisition of S.J. Electro Systems, a manufacturer of control solutions for the water and wastewater industry
- Advising TPG Capital on a variety of matters, including its: