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Justin S. Alex is a partner and a member of the Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Group.

Justin advises private and public companies on all aspects of their employee benefits and executive compensation arrangements and plans.

He has particular experience in the sports industry, including employment agreements for executives at the highest levels in professional sports and the benefits and compensation aspects of numerous transactions, such as the purchase or sale of the Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Denver Broncos, Miami Marlins, Real Salt Lake, OL Reign, Professional Hockey Federation, the Licensed Sports Group Unit of VF Corporation, Full Swing Golf, and ADPRO Sports and the merger of the USFL and XFL.

In addition to Justin's general benefits and compensation practice, he spends a significant portion of his time advising employers and financial sponsors with respect to pension liabilities. He also advises the trustees of collectively bargained single-employer and multiemployer plans with respect to their administration, governance, and legal compliance.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Justin was an attorney in the Office of Chief Counsel at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), where he gained significant experience with pension termination and underfunding issues. He also represented the PBGC in corporate bankruptcies and federal court litigation.

Justin is the co-editor of Proskauer’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Blog and the Hiring Partner for Proskauer’s Washington office. He also serves on the Board of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.

On November 1st, the IRS released a number of inflation adjustments for 2024, including to certain limits for qualified retirement plans. As expected, this year’s adjustments are more modest than last year’s significant increases. The table below provides an overview of the key adjustments for qualified retirement plans.

Qualified Defined Benefit Plans
20232024

ERISA Section 4010 requires a contributing sponsor of certain single-employer pension plans, as well as the sponsor’s controlled group members, to provide controlled group, financial, and actuarial information to the PBGC each year.  The requirement generally applies when one or more plans within a controlled group has a funding target attainment percentage for 4010 purposes

As previously discussed, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (the “PBGC”) issued final regulations in July 2022 for plans that receive special financial assistance (“SFA”) under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (“ARPA”).  Among other things, the regulations imposed special withdrawal liability rules on plans that receive SFA – including a phase-in period for