The NAM 3/13/01 filed an amicus brief supporting Georgia-Pacific's petition for cert. in this case involving the 11th Circuit's decision on how to calculate retiree pension benefits in a cash-balance retirement account. Businesses might think that the current account balance in a cash-balance account would be the pay-out amount, but this court held that a plan administrator must instead project the employee's retirement benefit forward to retirement age using the plan's interest crediting rate, and then discount the value of the benefit back to the present using a lower interest rate specified in a Treasury Department regulation. This often results in a larger payout to retirees, undermining company expectations and puts a substantial penalty on companies that offer early retirements.The NAM urged the Supreme Court to hear this appeal, but they refused on 4/2/01. Cash-balance plans are a relatively new, and enormously successful, form of employer-sponsored pension plan in use by about 20% of Fortune 1000 companies. Employers must know the extent of their future obligations, and we had hoped for a resolution that recognizes the validity of Section 203(e) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which conflicts with IRS regulations that have never been finalized.