By: Russ Kamp, CEO, Ryan ALM, Inc.

Welcome to the middle of June. We finally had a beautiful weather weekend in NJ. Hope that your’s was wonderful, too. Congrats to the Knicks on their first championship since 1973. I won’t share how old I was when they last won, but I remember it very well.

Regarding ARPA and the PBGC’s effort to implement this critical pension legislation, they seem to be in a holding pattern currently. As we witnessed last week, there were no new applications submitted to the PBGC, none of the applications before the PBGC were approved. Bricklayers Local No. 55 Pension Plan must have its application acted on by June 25th or they automatically receive the SFA that they have sought ($6.4 million).

Importantly, no applications were either denied or withdrawn. Furthermore, no action has been taken regarding the 80 Mass Withdrawal funds sitting on the waitlist. As previously mentioned, there remains just one fund on the original waitlist that has yet to submit an application.

Despite the lack of activity, we will continue to provide our weekly update. Hopefully, something will develop soon regarding the roughly 28 plans that have withdrawn applications and the 84 that have yet to submit one. Congrats to the 161 plans that have been awarded SFA (and interest).