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Raymond Malone has over 20 years' experience in the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation areas. He has handled matters covering most aspects of the design, implementation, maintenance, operation, amendment, and termination of the many types of qualified and nonqualified retirement plans and programs, tax-deferred annuity plans, 457 plans, and funded and unfunded welfare and fringe benefit plans. Mr. Malone also has represented employers, lenders, and fiduciaries in numerous matters relating to Employee Stock Ownership Plans.

The types of employers with which Mr. Malone has worked include corporations (ranging in size from mid-market corporations to FORTUNE 100 corporations to large privately held corporations), partnerships, limited liability companies, venture capital funds, REITs, and tax-exempt employers, such as hospitals, universities, local school systems, governmental entities, and church-affiliated institutions.

Mr. Malone, for many of these employers, or for their Compensation Committees, also provides advice in the design, implementation, maintenance, operation, and termination of nonqualified deferred compensation programs and other executive incentive compensation programs for both taxable and tax-exempt employers, and in counseling employers to either comply with the new Code Section 409A rules, or design to avoid their application. These include funded, unfunded, stock-based, stock option, unit stock-based programs and other types of equity and cash incentive plans. Relatedly, Mr. Malone regularly negotiates employment and separation agreements for these entities for their most senior or highest level executives.

He also has represented and counseled numerous employers in administrative, litigated, and other contested matters involving employee benefit plans. These include matters before the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Department of Labor, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and among employers, fiduciaries, plan sponsors, and private plaintiffs—such as plan participants or their beneficiaries.

Mr. Malone also has counseled issuers of securities, lenders, borrowers, purchasers, and sellers with regard to employee benefit issues that affect the issuance of securities, the extension of credit, and the acquisition or disposition of assets or of the stock of subsidiary, affiliated, or unrelated organizations. He has provided advice and strategy in designing, structuring and documenting private equity, venture capital, and REIT transactions involving investment by ERISA plans and other benefit plan investors.

Mr. Malone, in addition, has handled employment law matters that relate to or directly affect employee benefit plans but that arise under general employment law. These matters include certain issues, problems, or projects under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Older Worker Benefit Protection Act (for example, with respect to the design of early retirement programs), the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the National Labor Relations Act. Mr. Malone has extensive experience in designing and implementing workforce reduction plans and programs and also counsels employers and high level executives in negotiating employment agreements and separation agreements.

Mr. Malone has extensive experience in counseling Taft-Hartley retirement and welfare funds of all sizes, and has represented such funds before the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Department of Labor, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and matters between the funds and their participants or beneficiaries.

With respect to many Taft-Hartley funds, Mr. Malone also has represented employers, employer-appointed trustees, and their interests with respect to such funds. He has extensive experience in withdrawal liability matters involving multiemployer pension plans and has represented and counseled employers in withdrawing from such plans and in arbitrating over withdrawal liability.

Mr. Malone has counseled both providers and purchasers of healthcare in complying with requirements under healthcare laws such as COBRA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Medicare Part D and numerous other laws involving the design, implementation, delivery and sale of healthcare services.

Mr. Malone, for five years, served as general counsel for a large manufacturer of prefabricated housing and commercial buildings. In this capacity, he handled a great variety of employment, financial, commercial, tax, and bankruptcy matters for this client and its former holding company and subsidiaries.

Professional Certifications and Honors:

• Certified Public Accountant in the State of Ohio [1982, nonpracticing]
• Continuously rated as preeminent in his field with the highest ethical standard by Martindale-Hubbell, an authoritative resource on the legal profession, since 2001
• Continuously named in The Best Lawyers in America since 2004
• Continuously named in Chambers USA since 2007