San Diego hospital faces possible trauma: workers' pensions jeopardized by Exec Life Collapse.San Diego San Diego (săn dēā`gō), city (1990 pop. 1,110,549), seat of San Diego co., S Calif., on San Diego Bay; inc. 1850. San Diego includes the unincorporated communities of La Jolla and Spring Valley. Coronado is across the bay. hospital faces possible trauma More than 700 employees of Tri-City Medical Center who had pension funds invested in Executive Life Insurance Co. could lose them in the collapse of the junk junk Classic Chinese sailing vessel of ancient unknown origin, still in wide use. High-sterned, with a projecting bow, the junk carries up to five masts on which are set square sails consisting of panels of linen or matting flattened by bamboo strips. bond-laden insurance firm. A total of $10.7 million from Tri-City employees is locked up in three funds administered by Executive Life, Tri-City Chief Executive Officer Leon Hooper hoop·er n. A maker or repairer of barrels and tubs; a cooper. told employees in memorandum last month. Those funds were frozen after the company was seized April 11 by state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi John Raymond Garamendi (born January 24, 1945) is a U.S. politician and a member of the Democratic Party. He became the 46th Lieutenant Governor of California on January 8 2007. . The Internal Revenue Service also claims Executive Life owes it hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes and could take its cut before pensioners see a dime. Garamendi spokeswoman Elena Stern said no decision had been reached yet on the salvagability of Executive Life. Garamendi is attempting to sell Executive Life to another company capable of meeting its obligations. No other San Diego County hospitals appear to have any of their pension funds in jeopardy jeopardy, in law, condition of a person charged with a crime and thus in danger of punishment. At common law a defendant could be exposed to jeopardy for the same offense only once; exposing a person twice is known as double jeopardy. , said Jim Lott, president of the Hospital Council of San Diego and Imperial counties. Only those Tri-City employees who chose pension plans with funds administered by Executive Life could lose money, said Dr. Cyril Kellett, chairman of Tri-City Hospital District's publicly elected governing board Noun 1. governing board - a board that manages the affairs of an institution board - a committee having supervisory powers; "the board has seven members" . Board member Eugene Geil said the hospital has appointed the law firm Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps as independent counsel to investigate the health of all Tri-City pension funds and to find out what chances Tri-City has of getting the money out of Executive Life. Because Garamendi and the IRS An abbreviation for the Internal Revenue Service, a federal agency charged with the responsibility of administering and enforcing internal revenue laws. will have the final say on what money, if any, is released, Geil said the board can do little beyond gathering information. Tri-City has three pension plans, only one of which invested funds in Executive Life. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Hooper's memorandum to employees, that plan had seven separate funds, three of which were placed with Executive Life. Those funds totaled $10.7 million, or 39 percent of the $27.4 million in the total pension plan. The Executive Life funds were invested as a guaranteed income contract, paying fixed interest rates of as much as 1.5 percent above money market funds. The other four funds and the two other plans are unaffected, Hooper wrote in the April 10 memorandum. The second plan, the National Security Retirement Program, has $24.1 million invested with Safeco. A third plan listed, from Lincoln National Insurance Co., was described as employee-directed but no dollar figure for investments was given. Geil noted that many other pension plans, including Blue Cross, invested in Executive Life and are in the same boat as Tri-City. PHOTO : Bradley J. Fikes is a staff writer at the San Diego Business Journal. |
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