Current and former participants in a defined contribution plan for M&T Bank Corp., Buffalo, N.Y., have sued plan fiduciaries and corporate executives alleging breaches of fiduciary duties based on selection of investment options for the plan.
Seeking class-action status, the plaintiffs argued that the defendants failed to remove a series of “imprudent” investments, which had “extraordinarily high fees and chronic underperformance,” according to the complaint filed May 11 in the U.S. District Court in Buffalo, N.Y.
The DC plan had $1.92 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, 2014, according to the company’s latest 11-K report on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The plaintiffs maintained that plan fiduciaries “on multiple occasions” invested in higher-priced shares of mutual funds “even though less expensive share classes were available for the exact same investments,” said the complaint in the case Habib et al. vs. M&T Bank Corp. et al.
In their complaint, they also said fiduciaries “failed to conduct an impartial review” of the performance of various M&T-owned proprietary funds available in the investment lineup “to determine whether it remained prudent for the plan to retain those proprietary funds.”
The fiduciaries’ review process, the complaint concluded, “was deeply flawed.”
Officials at M&T could not be reached for comment.
