Amy N. Moore

Amy Moore is a partner in Covington’s employee benefits and executive compensation practice.  She advises some of the world's largest multinational companies on a wide range of tax, ERISA, health care, and employment law issues concerning all types of compensation arrangements and benefit programs.  Her clients include state governments, national tax-exempt organizations, and private companies as well as Fortune 500 companies.

Ms. Moore helps employers design and implement innovative benefit strategies.  She advises plan fiduciaries and asset managers on benefit plan investments, prohibited transaction exemptions, and plan governance issues.  She also advises on benefits and compensation issues in corporate transactions, and she represents employers before Congress and the federal agencies.

Ms. Moore has successfully defended employers and fiduciaries in a variety of audits and contested agency proceedings involving benefit plans.  She advises clients on employee benefits issues in connection with ERISA litigation and settlements.  She also counsels employers on issues of plan administration and the correction of operational problems under government-sponsored remedial programs.

Ms. Moore is outside counsel to The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC), a non-profit association representing America’s largest employers on employee benefits issues.  She is a frequent speaker on employee benefits, executive compensation, and plan investment topics, and she has testified before Congress and the federal agencies on compensation and benefits issues.  She has been recognized by her peers as one of the top 100 lawyers and one of the top 50 women lawyers in Washington, DC, and she is ranked as one of the top 20 employee benefits lawyers in the nation.

Representative Matters

Plan Investment & Fiduciary Issues

• Successfully represented Verizon Communications Inc. in one of the largest pension annuitization transactions in US history.
• Advised investment managers for large pension funds on the structure and documentation of investments in swaps, index options, and other derivatives, including fiduciary and prohibited transaction issues related to Dodd-Frank clearing and margin requirements.
• Prepared and delivered fiduciary education programs for senior executives who oversee the investment of more than $60 billion in retirement plan assets.
• Counseled several of the largest in-house investment managers (with combined assets under management exceeding $150 billion) on fiduciary issues, including compliance with the INHAM prohibited transaction class exemption and related audit requirements.
• Prepared an investment committee charter, investment policy statement, and related governance documents for a section 401(k) plan covering more than 200,000 participants.

• Assisted a large public company with a ground-breaking transaction that added a guaranteed minimum withdrawal investment option to its $15 billion section 401(k) plan.
• Assisted a company to add custom-designed target retirement date funds as investment options under section 401(k) plans.
• Successfully restructured several complex defined benefit plans covering approximately 90,000 employees in order to implement a new enterprise-wide retirement program.

• Developed an Affordable Care Act compliance strategy for health reimbursement accounts covering more than 20,000 public employees.
• Resolved tax and fiduciary issues in connection with the proposed consolidation of more than $1 billion in assets held in separate voluntary employees’ beneficiary associations (“VEBAs”).
• Helped a Fortune 50 company transfer excess insurance reserves from a disability insurance policy to a tax-exempt trust for retiree medical benefits.

• Helped a sports league develop a novel long-term incentive program for its commissioner.
• Advised the compensation committee of a public company’s board of directors concerning the termination of senior executives.
• Advised on techniques for reducing golden parachute liability in connection with the merger of two financial services companies.
• Advised a Fortune 250 company with respect to the correction of operational errors under its deferred compensation plan for senior executives.

• Resolved a Department of Labor investigation concerning the payment of expenses with plan assets, without any liability for the plan sponsor or fiduciaries.
• Negotiated a closing agreement with the Internal Revenue Service for a nominal amount in a matter concerning a financial institution’s qualification to serve as trustee for hundreds of millions of dollars in IRA assets.
• Successfully concluded an “early warning” proceeding before the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, so that a public company was able to complete a corporate restructuring without providing the additional pension funding or guarantees originally demanded by the PBGC.
• Helped a public company retain an independent fiduciary and settle potential securities-law claims arising from a failure to register interests in the company’s section 401(k) plan.
• Obtained an IRS determination letter effectively reversing an arbitration decision against the company a dispute concerning union-negotiated plant closing benefits, and secured the Tax Court’s dismissal of the union’s subsequent declaratory judgment action.

• Testified on health care reform before the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions of the House Committee on Education and Labor.
• Helped secure the enactment of legislation extending and expanding an Internal Revenue Code provision that allows companies to use surplus pension assets to provide health and life insurance benefits to their employees.
• Testified on behalf of The ERISA Industry Committee at an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hearing concerning workplace wellness programs.
• Obtained rulings from the Internal Revenue Service and an advisory opinion from the Labor Department approving an innovative trust and insurance arrangement that protects executive medical benefits following a change in control.

Honors and Rankings

• Nation’s Top 20 Employee Benefits Lawyers, Human Resources Executive magazine & Lawdragon
• One of the Top 100 Lawyers and Top 50 Women Lawyers in Washington, DC, Washington DC Super Lawyers
• Leading Lawyer, Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation, Legal 500 US
• Chambers USA, Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation
• The Best Lawyers in America, Employee Benefits
• Washington DC Super Lawyers, Employee Benefits/ERISA
• Martindale-Hubbell, AV Preeminent® Peer Review Rated

Publications and Speeches

• "PPACA's Impact: The Election, 2013 and Beyond," Law360 (7/20/2012), Co-Author
• "Stock Options - You Can't Take Them With You," 2 Public Company Advocate 4 (July 1999), Co-Author