Mike’s practice focuses on all areas of ERISA employee benefits, including pension and welfare plans, executive and stock-based compensation and benefits issues in mergers and acquisitions.

Mike’s benefits practice with Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP is complemented by three years of experience working as a staff attorney for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and close to two years working as in-house benefits counsel for a Fortune 500 company.

Relevant Experience

• Advises clients with respect to the design and operation of employee pension benefit plans to ensure compliance with ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code and other applicable law.
• Advises clients with respect to the design and operation of welfare benefit plans including group health plans, cafeteria plans, flexible spending arrangements and severance plans, to ensure compliance with ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, HIPAA and COBRA.
• Assisted clients in amending their nonqualified deferred compensation plans and executive employment agreements to comply with the deferral and payment rules of Code Section 409A, the golden parachute rules of Section 280G and the deduction limits of Section 162(m).
• Assisted clients in correcting pension plan failures in accordance with the voluntary compliance programs of the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor.

• Advised clients’ plan fiduciary committees concerning their ERISA obligations generally, and with respect to specific issues such as the risk of excess fee litigation and company "stock drop" lawsuits.
• Prepared ERISA fiduciary breach pleadings, including a complaint alleging fiduciary breach by hedge fund managers relating to ERISA plan assets.
• Advised clients with respect to ERISA’s benefit claims review and appeal procedures.
• Assisted clients in responding to audit requests from the Internal Revenue Service relating to the taxation of employee benefits and wages.
• Advised clients with respect to employee benefits issues arising in corporate mergers, acquisitions and reorganizations.
• Experience with the PBGC included assisting the agency with involuntary terminations of under-funded or abandoned pension plans, litigating fiduciary breach actions against former plan fiduciaries and filing bankruptcy claims against plan sponsors.

Bar Admissions

Education
JD, George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, cum laude, Lead Articles Editor, Journal of International Legal Studies, 1997BA, Economics, Rice University, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1988