BREAKING STORY: Supreme Court FULL TEXT Opinion on ESOPs Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer

BREYER, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Petitioner Fifth Third Bancorp maintains a defined-contribution retirement savings plan for its employees. Plan participants may direct their contributions into any of a number of investment options,including an "employee stock ownership plan" (ESOP), which invests its funds primarily in Fifth Third stock. Respondents, former Fifth Third employees and ESOP participants, filed this lawsuit against petitioners, Fifth Third and several of its officers who are alleged to be fiduciaries of the ESOP. The complaint alleges that petitioners breached the fiduciary duty of prudence imposed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 29 U. S. C. §1104(a)(1)(B). Specifically, the complaint alleges that petitioners should have known-on the basis of both publicly available information and inside information available to petitioners because they were Fifth Third officers-that Fifth Third stock was overpriced and excessively risky. It further alleges that a prudent fiduciary in petitioners' position would have responded to this information by selling off the ESOP's holdings of Fifth Third stock, refraining from purchasing more Fifth Third stock, or disclosing the negative inside information so that the market could correct the stock's price downward. According to the complaint, petitioners did none of these things, and the price of Fifth Third stock ultimately fell, reducing respondents' retirement savings. The District Court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, but the Sixth Circuit reversed. It concluded that ESOP fiduciaries are entitled to a "presumption of prudence" that does not apply to other ERISA fiduciaries but that the presumption is an evidentiary one and therefore does not apply at the pleading stage. The court went on to hold that the complaint stated a claim for breach of fiduciary duty. 

Held:

1. 

ESOP fiduciaries are not entitled to any special presumption of prudence. Rather, they are subject to the same duty of prudence that applies to ERISA fiduciaries in general, §1104(a)(1)(B), except that they need not diversify the fund's assets, §1104(a)(2). This conclusion follows from the relevant provisions of ERISA. Section 1104(a)(1)(B) "imposes a 'prudent person' standard by which to measure fiduciaries' investment decisions and disposition of assets." Massachusetts Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Russell, 473 U. S. 134, 143, n. 10. Section 1104(a)(1)(C) requires ERISA fiduciaries to diversify plan assets. And §1104(a)(2) establishes the extent to which those duties are loosened in the ESOP context by providing that "the diversification requirement of [§1104(a)(1)(C)] and the prudence requirement (only to the extent that it requires diversification) of [§1104(a)(1)(B)] [are] not violated by acquisition or holding of [employer stock]." Section 1104(a)(2) makes no reference to a special "presumption" in favor of ESOP fiduciaries and does not require plaintiffs to allege that the employer was, e.g., on the "brink of collapse." It simply modifies the duties imposed by §1104(a)(1) in a precisely delineated way. Thus, aside from the fact that ESOP fiduciaries are not liable for losses that result from a failure to diversify, they are subject to the duty of prudence like other ERISA fiduciaries. Pp. 4-15.

2. 

On remand, the Sixth Circuit should reconsider whether the complaint states a claim by applying the pleading standard as discussed in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U. S. 662, 677-680, and Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U. S. 544, 554-563, in light of the following considerations. Pp. 15-20.

(a) 

Where a stock is publicly traded, allegations that a fiduciary should have recognized on the basis of publicly available information that the market was overvaluing or undervaluing the stock are generally implausible and thus insufficient to state a claim under Twombly and Iqbal. Pp. 16-18.

(b) 

To state a claim for breach of the duty of prudence, a complaint must plausibly allege an alternative action that the defendant could have taken, that would have been legal, and that a prudent fiduciary in the same circumstances would not have viewed as more likely to harm the fund than to help it. Where the complaint alleges that a fiduciary was imprudent in failing to act on the basis of inside information, the analysis is informed by the following points. First, ERISA's duty of prudence never requires a fiduciary to break the law, and so a fiduciary cannot be imprudent for failing to buy or sell stock in violation of the insider trading laws. Second, where a complaint faults fiduciaries for failing to decide, based on negative inside infor

mation, to refrain from making additional stock purchases or for failing to publicly disclose that information so that the stock would no longer be overvalued, courts should consider the extent to which imposing an ERISA-based obligation either to refrain from making a planned trade or to disclose inside information to the public could conflict with the complex insider trading and corporate disclosure requirements set forth by the federal securities laws or with the objectives of those laws. Third, courts confronted with such claims should consider whether the complaint has plausibly alleged that a prudent fiduciary in the defendant's position could not have concluded that stopping purchases or publicly disclosing negative information would do more harm than good to the fund by causing a drop in the stock price and a concomitant drop in the value of the stock already held by the fund. Pp. 18-20.

692 F. 3d 410, vacated and remanded.

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The complaint alleges that by July 2007, the fiduciaries knew or should have known that Fifth Third's stock was overvalued and excessively risky for two separate reasons. First, publicly available information such as newspaper articles provided early warning signs that subprime lending, which formed a large part of Fifth Third's business, would soon leave creditors high and dry as the housing market collapsed and subprime borrowers became unable to pay off their mortgages. Second, nonpublic information (which petitioners knew because they were Fifth Third insiders) indicated that Fifth Third officers had deceived the market by making material misstatements about the company's financial prospects. Those misstatements led the market to overvalue Fifth Third stock-the ESOP's primary investment-and so petitioners, using the participants' money, were consequently paying more for that stock than it was worth.

The complaint further alleges that a prudent fiduciary in petitioners' position would have responded to this information in one or more of the following ways: (1) by selling the ESOP's holdings of Fifth Third stock before the value of those holdings declined, (2) by refraining from purchasing any more Fifth Third stock, (3) by canceling the Plan's ESOP option, and (4) by disclosing the inside information so that the market would adjust its valuation of Fifth Third stock downward and the ESOP would no longer be overpaying for it.

Rather than follow any of these courses of action, petitioners continued to hold and buy Fifth Third stock. Then the market crashed, and Fifth Third's stock price fell by 74% between July 2007 and September 2009, when the complaint was filed. Since the ESOP's funds were invested primarily in Fifth Third stock, this fall in price eliminated a large part of the retirement savings that the participants had invested in the ESOP. (The stock has since made a partial recovery to around half of its July 2007 price.) 

Pages 2 - 3 of the Opinion

In our view, where a stock is publicly traded, allegations that a fiduciary should have recognized from publicly available information alone that the market was over- or undervaluing the stock are implausible as a general rule,at least in the absence of special circumstances. Many investors take the view that " 'they have little hope of outperforming the market in the long run based solely on their analysis of publicly available information,' " and accordingly they " 'rely on the security's market price as an unbiased assessment of the security's value in light of all public information.' " . . .

Page 16 of the Opinion

Respondents also claim that petitioners behaved imprudently by failing to act on the basis of nonpublic information that was available to them because they were Fifth Third insiders. In particular, the complaint alleges that petitioners had inside information indicating that the market was overvaluing Fifth Third stock and that they could have used this information to prevent losses to the fund by (1) selling the ESOP's holdings of Fifth Third stock; (2) refraining from future stock purchases (including by removing the Plan's ESOP option altogether); or (3) publicly disclosing the inside information so that the market would correct the stock price downward, with the result that the ESOP could continue to buy Fifth Third stock without paying an inflated price for it. See App. 17,88-89, 113.

To state a claim for breach of the duty of prudence on the basis of inside information, a plaintiff must plausibly allege an alternative action that the defendant could have taken that would have been consistent with the securities laws and that a prudent fiduciary in the same circumstances would not have viewed as more likely to harm the fund than to help it. The following three points inform the requisite analysis. First, in deciding whether the complaint states a claim upon which relief can be granted, courts must bear in mind that the duty of prudence, under ERISA as under the common law of trusts, does not require a fiduciary to break the law. . .

Second, where a complaint faults fiduciaries for failing to decide, on the basis of the inside information, to refrain from making additional stock purchases or for failing to disclose that information to the public so that the stock would no longer be overvalued, additional considerations arise. The courts should consider the extent to which an ERISA-based obligation either to refrain on the basis of inside information from making a planned trade or to disclose inside information to the public could conflict with the complex insider trading and corporate disclosure requirements imposed by the federal securities laws or with the objectives of those laws. . .

Pages 18 - 19 of the Opinion

Third, lower courts faced with such claims should also consider whether the complaint has plausibly alleged that a prudent fiduciary in the defendant's position could not have concluded that stopping purchases-which the market might take as a sign that insider fiduciaries viewed the employer's stock as a bad investment-or publicly disclosing negative information would do more harm than good to the fund by causing a drop in the stock price and a concomitant drop in the value of the stock already held by the fund.

Page 20 of the Opinion 

• Fifth Third Bancorp
• Dudenhoeffer
• Supreme Court
• ERISA
• ESOP
• ESOPs
• BrokeAndBroker
• Bill Singer
• Prudent Fiduciary
• Fiduciary