BOB’S principal focus is employee benefits and executive compensation law. He counsels publicly-traded and closely-held businesses regarding qualified and nonqualified employee benefit plans, including pension, profit sharing and 401(k) plans; medical and welfare benefit plans; and executive compensation arrangements.

Bob provides advice in dealing with plans through their entire life cycle, from design and implementation through merger or termination, for companies ranging from large, multinational corporations to professional service organizations. He is experienced in dealing with tax issues associated with retirement plans, deferred compensation plans, IRAs and welfare plans, and in analyzing coverage and nondiscrimination testing for qualified retirement plans. Bob also counsels clients regarding benefit plan issues in connection with mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, and transitions to new plan designs (such as from traditional defined benefit plans to cash balance plans, pension equity plans or cross-tested profit-sharing plans).

Bob is an active member of the American Bar Association.  He currently serves as a vice chair of the Employee Benefits Committee of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Section of Taxation, as well as the vice chair of the Employee Benefit Plans and Other Compensation Arrangements Group of the ABA, Section of Real Property, Trust and Estate Law.  He has previously served as chair of the Employee Benefits Subcommittee on Defined Contribution Plans of the ABA Tax Section.  He has been repeatedly named one of The Best Lawyers in America in the area of employee benefits law and has also been inducted into the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel, an organization of attorneys who have focused on employee benefits for at least 20 years and written or spoken extensively on employee benefit issues.  Bob has presented at organizations such as Worldwide Employee Benefits (WEB), Cleveland Tax Club, American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries (ASPPA) and ABA on a broad range of topics including “New Deferred Compensation Rules under 409A,” “M&A Issues Regarding Section 409A,” “Overview Of The Pension Reform Proposal,” “Financial Aspects of Qualified Plans, Regular IRAs and Roth IRAs”; “Joint Venture Employee Benefit Issues”; “Cross Tested and Age Weighted Profit Sharing Plans”; and “Investment Advice or Investment Education?”  He is also the author of “Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Plans” chapter for the BNA treatise on Executive Compensation.

Bob was an associate with the law firm of Letson & Jarrett before joining Calfee in 1988. He became a partner in the firm in 1996.