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Professionals 186 results
Capabilities 59 results
Practice Area
Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation
With attorneys based in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C., Winston’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation (EBEC) team represents a broad range of plan sponsors and offers clients not just deal support but the full suite of employee benefit services. These include public company reporting and executive compensation, employee benefits in mergers and acquisitions, qualified retirement plans and Title I investment advice, health and welfare benefit plans, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), and international human resources matters. And driven by a volatile labor market, we are partnering with clients to innovate plan structure and design, including cutting-edge services such as private exchange medical benefits, employee benefits in captive insurance, and fiduciary governance best practices. With decades of experience, our EBEC team maintains strong brand recognition, with clients describing our attorneys as “superb,” “very client-friendly,” “extremely responsive and able to bring forth the right resources,” and “having an “incredible breadth of knowledge.”
Practice Area
Executive Compensation Plans & Agreements
Our Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation (EBEC) attorneys generally focus on two separate but related areas—employee benefits and executive compensation. We advise corporations, boards of directors, private equity firms, and executives on all legal, design, drafting, negotiation, and compliance aspects of executive compensation matters. We advise corporations, firms, fiduciaries, executives, administrators, governmental entities, and financial institutions on innovative and traditional employee retirement and health and welfare benefits programs. Our substantial experience and over 50 years of involvement in the EBEC field have given us a deep understanding of the evolution of benefits law and the market for executive compensation.
Practice Area
Our team’s deep market knowledge of laws affecting retirement plans enables us to develop customized retirement plan solutions, practical advice, and strategies for our clients’ unique needs and workforce composition. Our experienced benefits attorneys represent public companies, private companies, and private equity operating companies in retirement plan design and day-to-day plan compliance.
Experience 38 results
Experience
|July 30, 2025
Represent Norman W. Fries, Inc. d/b/a Claxton Poultry Farms in a series of 15+ antitrust class actions consolidated in the Northern District of Illinois and brought by plaintiffs who allege that Claxton and the nation’s other largest poultry producers conspired to fix the price of broiler chickens in a scheme from 2008 to 2016 that raised the price for broiler chickens by artificially reducing supply.
Experience
|June 8, 2025
Secured, with co-counsel, final approval of an historic settlement of over US$2.75B in back-damages for current and former college-athletes and a new revenue-sharing model allowing schools to share future earnings with athletes. This decade-long effort across four different lawsuits redefines the economics of college sports, affirming athlete rights and fair compensation. Following a 9-0 Supreme Court victory in Alston v. NCAA, the team filed three antitrust class actions, resulting in a groundbreaking settlement that creates a revenue-sharing system projected to generate at least US$20B in new, previously prohibited payments and benefits to Division I college athletes over the next decade. The settlement was recognized in Am Law‘s Litigator of the Week column.
Experience
|March 31, 2025
After an eleven-day bench trial in January 2023, the N.D. Ill. delivered a full defense verdict in March 2025 in an ERISA class action brought by participants in Segerdahl Corporation’s ESOP. The court rejected the class claims against Segerdahl, its ESOP trustee GreatBanc Trust Company, and various individual defendants including board members Bob Cronin, Rod Goldstein, and Peter Mason, alleging that Segerdahl could have sold for a significantly higher price, which would have increased post-sale distributions to the ESOP participants. Winston earned an Am Law Litigator of the Week Shout Out for this win.
Insights & News 2,381 results
Winston’s Environmental Law Update
|October 30, 2025
|5 Min Read
E15 Gasoline: Legal Landscape and Recent Legislative Updates
The EPA establishes a national standard for gasoline volatility (Reid vapor pressure, or RVP) via section 211(h) of the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds.
False Claims Act Playbook
|October 30, 2025
|5 Min Read
On October 15, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska (the Court) dismissed Pharos Capital Group and its related investment funds (Pharos Capital) from a qui tam or whistleblower suit brought under the antiretaliation provision of the False Claims Act (31 U.S.C. § 3730(h)) (the FCA), against Pharos Capital and Charter Health Care Group (Charter), a portfolio company of Pharos Capital.
Competition Corner
|October 23, 2025
|2 Min Read
California Strengthens Its Antitrust Law with Stiffer Penalties
On October 6, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law S.B. 763, which will comprehensively strengthen the enforcement framework of California’s Cartwright Act.
Other Results 52 results
Law Glossary
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) is a federal law from 1974 that governs how employers provide benefit plans to employees. ERISA is administered in part by the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Labor. The law establishes requirements and guidelines for employers and benefit plan managers, trustees and certain other service providers. ERISA ensures minimum standards are set for the majority of private industry pension and health plans, as well as other benefit plans such as life insurance. Under ERISA, employees must be notified of benefit plan terms, including funding, coverage, and costs. Employees are also offered protections against fiduciary wrongdoing. Plan participants or the DOL may be able to sue plan fiduciaries if plans are mismanaged or if plan fiduciaries engage in conduct prohibited under ERISA, and plan participants may sue for unpaid benefits.
Site Content
What Is a Delaware Corporation?
A Delaware corporation is a company that is formed in the state of Delaware but can conduct business anywhere. Incorporating in Delaware has become widespread among large U.S. companies, including more than half of the S&P 500.
Law Glossary
What Is Executive Compensation?
The term executive compensation refers to the financial payments and non-financial benefits provided to the upper level management within a business or organization. Employees who receive this type of compensation are generally presidents or vice-presidents, chief executive, financial, operating, legal, and other C-Suite executives. An executive compensation package is a group of benefits that could include stock awards, severance protection, deferred compensation, and retirement plans. SEC regulations require public companies to disclose the amount their executives are earning, plus how this amount is calculated. Some states also have executive compensation laws.