Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, is considering ways of keeping defined contribution participants from losing all their retirement dollars if their employers run into financial trouble. He is considering letting employees diversify out of matching contributions made in employer stock prior to a pre-determined age, and keeping employers from requiring 401(k) plan participants to purchase company stock as a condition for participation, he said in a statement.
Mr. Grassley also wants to investigate whether officials at Enron Corp. violated their fiduciary duties in handling retirement money. "If employers find it easy to break the rules, then Congress has to rewrite the rule book,” he said.
