According to the article:
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The lawsuit "alleges that GE managed the plan for its own benefit by loading it with mutual funds owned by its own subsidiary. The funds charged high fees while also underperforming the investment markets, a double-barreled drawback that cost employees millions in potential gains."
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Specifically, "GE selected its proprietary funds not based on their merits as investments, but because these products provided significant revenues and profits to GE."
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"The value that ownership gave the funds contributed to the $485 million GE pocketed when it sold its investment subsidiary, GE Asset Management, to State Street in mid-2016, the lawsuit implies."
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About $7B dollars worth of funds were invested in mutual funds that vastly under-performed their benchmark indexes while charging much higher fees than index funds.
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In one specific example, "The fund returned a cumulative 36.29% gain from 2011 through mid-2016, while its rival Vanguard/Wellington Fund returned 57.71%. Despite that, the GE fund’s fees were twice those of the Wellington Fund."
This article is obviously a good reminder of the importance of index investing as well a the danger of high fees. In this case, it appears GE may have violated their fiduciary duty to 401(k) participants. It will be interesting to see if this lawsuit accelerates the trend toward index fund offerings within 401(k) plans - I know I'd love for Vanguard/Fidelity type index funds to be options for every 401(k) plan.
Submitted October 23, 2017 at 10:56AM by random_pf_guy http://ift.tt/2yJvpPX
