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A new document shows a significant change at the R.B. Pamplin Corp. and Subsidiaries Pension Plan and Trust.
That’s the full name of the $100 million pension fund established decades ago to benefit more than 2,000 current and former employees of the R.B. Pamplin Corp. and its various subsidiaries, which include Pamplin Communications, the 24-newspaper chain Pamplin Corp. recently sold; Mt. Vernon Mills, a chain of textile mills in the Southeastern U.S.; Ross Island Sand & Gravel; and Columbia Empire Farms.
As WW has reported, company owner and CEO Robert Pamplin Jr. has in past years resorted to the unusual step of selling dozens of Pamplin Corp. properties to the corporation’s affiliated pension fund, often at what appear to be inflated prices.
He could do so because he served as both CEO and owner of the various Pamplin Corp. operating companies and as sole trustee of the affiliated pension fund. Pension experts noted two problems with that practice: first, since Robert Pamplin acted as both seller and buyer of the dozens of properties, he set the price and there was no independent adviser looking out for the pensioners’ interests.
Second, the U.S. Department of Labor, which regulates pension funds, not only frowns on such conflicts of interest, it has specific rules governing real estate acquisitions. In short, the feds have strict rules on related-party transactions (which experts say Pamplin appears to have violated), and they also limit the amount of real estate of any kind that pension funds should own because property can be hard to sell—particularly if it’s heavily used industrial land now lying fallow.
More than half the pension fund’s $100 million in assets now consists of real estate purchased from Pamplin Corp. entities, an amount far in excess of Labor Department guidelines, which call for a ceiling of 10%.
Pensioners say they’ve been kept in the dark about the transactions affecting their retirement money—but that changed in the past week.
They received a document in the mail with a major revelation: Robert Pamplin Jr. is no longer the trustee of his company’s pension fund and has not been for nearly a year. Instead, the notice says, he has been replaced by the Newport Trust Company of New York.
It is unclear whether the Department of Labor ordered the change or Pamplin voluntarily relinquished control of the pension fund, but the effect is the same: Pensioners now have an independent trustee looking out for their interests rather than a self-interested one seeking to exchange surplus real estate for cash. (Pamplin and the Department of Labor didn’t respond to requests for comment. A Newport Trust spokesman declined to comment.)
The change to a new trustee may help explain another mystery: The Pamplin Corp. has yet to provide an audited financial statement to the Department of Labor for calendar year 2022. The company was supposed to have filed such audited financials for the pension fund in October 2023. That failure comes after the firm switched auditors the previous year and suggests difficulties.
As WW reported last week, Department of Labor officials are currently investigating the Pamplin pension fund.
Kevin Young, a retired Pamplin radio executive who served as general manager of KPAM (860 AM) and also led Pamplin Communications, says he’s relieved to learn there’s a new trustee overseeing his and other employees’ pensions and that the feds are trying to sort out what happened.
“I’m glad the Department of Labor is investigating this situation to protect those of us who have earned the pension,” Young says. “I’m sure there are many who live outside this area who don’t know about the questionable deals made.”