SEATTLE, April 26, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Attorney Advertising. Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC (www.cmht.com) and Keller Rohrback L.L.P. (www.erisafraud.com) announced that they have filed a class action Complaint in the United States District Court, Western District of Washington on behalf of the participants and beneficiaries of the Weyerhaeuser Retirement Plan for Salaried Employees and the Weyerhaeuser Retirement Plan for Hourly Employees (the "Plans"). The Complaint was filed against Weyerhaeuser Company (NYSE:WY), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Northwater Capital Management, Inc., Weyerhaeuser Asset Management LLC and various individual defendants.
The Complaint alleges that Defendants breached their fiduciary duties owed to Plan participants by causing or permitting the Plans' Master Trust to invest more than 81% of its assets in alternative investments (including 53% in hedge funds and 24% in private equity), an inherently risky, illiquid and unusual asset allocation. Compounding this misguided allocation of assets, as alleged in the Complaint, Defendants magnified the portfolio's risk with the purchase of derivatives, substantially overshooting their own target for the portfolio's risk. The Complaint further alleges that Defendants knew or should have known that their unique strategy exposed the portfolio to undue risk while conferring no benefit on plan participants in these overfunded pension plans. Additionally, the Complaint alleges that Defendants breached their fiduciary duties by investing in a stunningly large number of alternative investments (approximately 330 different hedge funds, private equity investments, and real estate funds) making it nearly impossible to manage the portfolio's risk and further breached their fiduciary duties by failing to perform adequate due diligence to ensure that the portfolio presented no more risk than the targeted benchmark.
The Complaint concludes that the Plans' inappropriately risky and poorly executed investment strategy caused the Plans' Master Trust to fall from being overfunded by $2.1 billion at the end of 2007 to being underfunded by $450 million just one year later, thereby jeopardizing the retirement benefits of the Plans' participants and beneficiaries.
If you are a member of the Weyerhaeuser Retirement Plan for Salaried Employees and the Weyerhaeuser Retirement Plan for Hourly Employees, you may contact attorney Marc Machiz at 267-773-4680 or attorney Derek Loeser at 206-623-1900.
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Keller Rohrback are two of America's leading law firms handling ERISA retirement plan litigation. Both firms are committed to helping employees and retirees protect their retirement savings.
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CONTACT: Keller Rohrback L.L.P. Jennifer Tuato'o, Paralegal (800) 776-6044 [email protected] www.erisafraud.com
