About

For over 25 years, Eric Keller has focused his practice on executive compensation, employee benefits, and workforce restructuring matters. A substantial portion of his practice is devoted to advising clients on labor, employment, and employee benefits matters in connection with domestic and cross-border mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and other business transactions, by conducting due diligence, negotiating, and preparing contract provisions, addressing transitional issues, and developing strategies to minimize financial expense and taxation. Eric also maintains a broad-based practice representing domestic and international clients on executive compensation, tax-qualified retirement plans, health and welfare plans, and workforce restructuring matters. He advises clients regarding tax, employment, fiduciary, governance, securities, and litigation issues. Eric also designs and prepares plan documents and participant communications, negotiates service-provider contracts, and assists clients in developing and operating efficient and prudent plan administration practices. In the area of executive compensation, Eric designs and implements employment agreements and executive compensation programs, including short, mid, and long-term incentives, equity-based compensation, retention, severance and change in control arrangements, deferred compensation, and supplemental retirement compensation. With respect to tax-qualified retirement plans, Eric advises investment committees and other plan fiduciaries on how to reduce their risk of fiduciary liability for plan investments and fees, and represents sponsors of employee benefit plans in voluntary compliance programs maintained by the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor. Eric also advises clients on the Affordable Care Act and HIPAA privacy compliance for group health plans, as well as Health Reimbursement Accounts, Health Savings Accounts, and other consumer-driven health plan designs. In addition, he represents plan fiduciaries in administrative claim disputes with participants and contractual disputes with service providers. Finally, in the workforce restructuring area of his practice, Eric designs and implements early retirement incentives and reduction in force programs and advises clients on the WARN Act, state WARN Act analogs, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and other related issues. Eric is ranked by Chambers USA as one of the top employee benefits and executive compensation lawyers in the District of Columbia, is recognized by Best Lawyers® in the area of Employee Benefits (ERISA) Law, and is ranked by Legal 500 in the areas of executive compensation and employee benefits. He is a fellow in the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel, the author of numerous published articles in his areas of expertise and serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School, teaching classes on executive compensation. Eric earned an LL.M in taxation from New York University School of Law, a J.D. from Capital University Law School (magna cum laude), and a B.B.A. from Ohio University.

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