A Global Guide to Retirement Plans & Schemes

The Employment & Benefits group is excited to announce the publication of A Global Guide to Retirement Plans & Schemes, the latest in its series of global guides.

The challenges facing global employers

Although retirement plans and schemes are generally jurisdiction-specific creatures, the governance of retirement plans and schemes maintained by multinational corporations is very much a global issue. These arrangements tend to be heavily regulated and pose numerous risks to the sponsor, including legal and regulatory compliance gaps, participant lawsuits, government investigations, embezzlement of trust funds, and plan funding and financial accounting consequences. Many employers are in the process of assessing (or reassessing) the governance and risk management structures for their retirement programs on a global basis.

Benefits of the Guide

A Global Guide to Retirement Plans & Schemes draws on the input of lawyers from across Mayer Brown’s global office network and partner law firms in other jurisdictions.

It provides a brief overview of the laws relating to the regulation of retirement plans and schemes in 50 key countries across the Americas, Asia and EMEA.

Each chapter summarizes the general contours of the country’s social security system and employer-sponsored broad-based plans/schemes. Key areas covered include:

• the principal statutes governing such plans/schemes;
• the key features of the applicable tax framework;
• employer funding obligations and the material rules governing plan/scheme investments;
• principal reporting and disclosure obligations; and
• the circumstances in which a retirement plan/scheme may be terminated and associated employer liability for any underfunded benefits.

We believe A Global Guide to Retirement Plans & Schemes will be a valuable starting point for multinational employers developing governance and risk management structures for their retirement programs.

How to download the Guide

A Global Guide to Retirement Plans & Schemes is available as an ebook/web reader and as interactive PDFs (in full and by region). Please note that, due to the file size, the PDFs may take some time to download. Please contact us if you have any difficulties.

EBook/Web Reader

Print Ready PDFs

A Global Guide to Retirement Plans & Schemes - Full Version 
A Global Guide to Retirement Plans & Schemes - Americas
A Global Guide to Retirement Plans & Schemes - Asia 
A Global Guide to Retirement Plans & Schemes - EMEA

For further resources, please see our suite of Employment & Benefits materials on our Global Tools & Resources page.