The 2015 Pension 40: Thomas Nyhan

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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