The team at Proskauer Rose LLP provides a comprehensive service in employee benefits and executive compensation plan design, with the practice’s multifaceted approach providing clients with high-quality and deep counsel across benefit and compensation plan design, issues regarding corporate transactions and employee benefits, and ERISA litigation all covered by the team. Based in Washington DC, Seth Safra leads the department, providing design assistance largest executive compensation plans to day-to-day administration and compliance advice He is joined from New York by Robert Projansky, an expert in employee benefits for clients in the entertainment industry, representing major entertainment companies on benefit plans valued in billions, and Michael Album, a thought-leader in the executive compensation field, representing management teams in multi-billion-dollar MBOs across a variety of sectors. Other leading attorneys in the department include New York’s Anthony Cacace, trusted in the ERISA multiemployer space, and Washington DC’s Justin Alex, an expert in distressed pension issues. Katrina McCann from NY is a leading associate in the field of benefit plan design.
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Profile
Work Department
Tax
Position
Katrina E. McCann is a senior counsel in Proskauer's Tax Department and a member of the Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Group.
Katrina advises a diverse group of clients on a broad spectrum of employee benefits matters, including:
- counseling clients with respect to the design, drafting, implementation and ongoing qualification of their qualified plans in both the single and multi-employer context, including profit sharing, money purchase, 401(k), ESOP, and defined benefit plans;
- providing counsel on the establishment, administration and continued legal compliance of health & welfare plans and programs;
- advising tax-exempt organizations regarding their 403(b) plans and 457 arrangements;
- creating and advising on non-qualified plans, including deferred compensation and supplemental employee retirement plans;
- providing technical and practical advice on compliance with ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, the Affordable Care Act, COBRA, HIPAA, and other laws affecting employee benefit plans, as well as issues concerning plan administration, qualification requirements, correction of plan document failures, fiduciary issues and prohibited transaction issues;
- routinely working with clients and their service providers, advising on the RFP process, reviewing provider arrangements and collaborating to develop effective and compliant disclosures, government reporting forms and participant communications;
- analyzing the employee benefits and executive compensation issues in connection with corporate transactions, advising on withdrawal liability matters and structuring benefit plans following a transaction and providing counsel with respect to all aspects of benefit plan mergers; and
- advising both employers and senior executives in connection with various executive compensation matters, including the negotiation and drafting of equity plans and awards, employment agreements, severance agreements and other compensation arrangements.
Katrina is a member and former co-chair of Proskauer Women's Alliance Steering Committee and serves on Proskauer’s Reproductive Rights Steering Committee. She is also a Board member of Playwrights Horizons, an off-Broadway theater dedicated to the development of contemporary American playwrights and the production of innovative new work, and a Board member of the Axe-Houghton Foundation.
Prior to joining Proskauer, Katrina served as Special Assistant to the Mayor’s Office of Pension and Investments and was Special Assistant Corporation Counsel, Pensions Division, New York City Law Department. While in law school, Katrina was the Robert M. LaFollette/Keenan Peck Legal Fellow, serving in the offices of Senator Herb Kohl & the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
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Key clients
- HealthEquity Johnson & Johnson Citigroup Inc. RELX Group Ahold Delhaize Metropolitan Opera Metropolitan Museum of Art New York Philharmonic New York City Ballet Consolidated Edison Inc. IAM National Pension Fund Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) Health Plan, Screen Actors Guild-Producers Pension Plan, Producer-Writers Guild Health and Pension Plans, AFTRA Retirement Fund, Equity-League Health Plan and American Federation of Musicians & Employers’ Pension Fund Union Labor Life Insurance Company (ULLICO) Paper Handler's - Publishers' Pension Fund, |the Pressmen's - Publishers' Pension Fund, the Pressmen's - Publishers' Welfare Fund, the Newspaper & Mail Deliverers' - Publishers' Pension Fund, the Mailer's - Publishers' Welfare Trust Fund, and the Suburban Wholesalers Association Pension Plan
Work highlights
Successfully represented IAM National Pension Fund on significant withdrawal liability recoveries and affirmation of the fund’s withdrawal liability assumptions in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Advised Board of Trustees of the Screen Actors Guild – Producers Health merged Plan on adoption of health plan private exchange and on successful resolution of lawsuit related to the plan merger and design.
Advised RELX and other large employers on complex plan design and administration issues.