Intel Workers Savage 401(k) Benchmark Rule in High Court Brief

Intel Corp. workers challenging the private equity investments in their 401(k) plans urged the US Supreme Court to reject the “meaningful benchmark” standard some courts use to assess disputes over retirement fund performance.

The judge-made standard is a “solution in search of a problem” that’s found nowhere in the text of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the workers said in a Thursday brief. It’s inconsistent with ordinary pleading rules requiring courts to treat factual allegations as true in most cases, and it’s a “poor proxy” for judging the prudence of a given investment, they said.

The pleading standard ...