Principal Units Sued Over Electrical Worker Retirement Plan (1)

Participants in a retirement plan covering electrical workers in the Pacific Northwest sued units of Principal Financial Group Inc., saying they’d mismanaged the plan through high fees and flawed in-house funds.

The proposed class action, filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Oregon, centers on a defined contribution retirement plan affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, for which Principal units provided investment management and recordkeeping services. The defendants mismanaged the plan by extracting unreasonable fees and filling it with the company’s own pricey and poorly-performing target-date funds, which allowed them to profit ...