Benefits and Compensation

Latham & Watkins' Benefits & Compensation Practice offers a full range of transactional services as well as ongoing counsel on benefits and compensation matters to employers worldwide. Our significant experience and expertise regarding the laws and regulations that govern benefits and compensation matters enable us to offer focused, comprehensive and practical advice on design and compliance issues in a number of jurisdictions, including the US.

We work with businesses and their officers, boards and compensation committees in all facets of designing, drafting, implementing and administering executive compensation arrangements and employee benefit plans. In these matters we employ our expertise in the relevant tax, employment, corporate, securities and stock exchange laws and regulations, as well as our knowledge of accounting issues and customary practice and benchmarks, to provide our clients with holistic and practical advice.

Our group also plays an integral role in corporate merger, acquisition and divestiture transactions, advising both acquiring and acquired companies on identifying and disposing of assets and liabilities inherent in compensation and benefit plans, planning opportunities relating to integrating work forces and benefit plans and strategies for negotiating these issues in the transaction. We also work with our clients and our colleagues in various corporate and finance practice groups in structuring investment funds and securities in order to qualify them for acquisition by US pension plans under the US Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and with our colleagues in the Employment Law Practice Group on benefit plan issues in outsourcing transactions and employment and benefit plan litigation matters.

Practice Breadth

We are experienced at designing, negotiating, drafting, implementing and administering executive compensation arrangements and employee benefit plans and arrangements of all types and in all contexts, including:

• CEO and other senior executive employment agreements and benefit arrangements

• Change in Control and other severance plans and arrangements

• Bonus and other annual and long-term incentive compensation plans, including plans that qualify as “performance-based” under US tax laws

• Stock option and other equity-based compensation plans, for both public and private companies

• Tax-qualified pension and profit sharing plans and ESOPs

• Nonqualified deferred compensation plans, SERPs and other retirement plans and arrangements

• Health care and other welfare benefit plans and arrangements

• Structuring ERISA qualified venture capital and real estate operating companies and other investment vehicles

• Structuring benefit plans and maintenance of benefit arrangements in outsourcing transactions