444
Opinion of the Court
tory plan, a noncontributory plan, or any other type of plan. Our holding did not turn, as the Court of Appeals below thought, on the type of plan being amended for the simple reason that the plain language of the statute defining fiduciary makes no distinction. See id., at 891; ERISA § 404(a), 29 U. S. C. § 1104(a) (specifying duties of a "fiduciary . . . with respect to a plan"). Rather, it turned on whether the employer's act of amending its plan constituted an exercise of fiduciary duty. In Spink, we concluded it did not. 517 U. S., at 891.
The same act of amending here also does not constitute the action of a fiduciary, although Hughes' Plan happens to be one to which employees contribute. In general, an employer's decision to amend a pension plan concerns the composition or design of the plan itself and does not implicate the employer's fiduciary duties which consist of such actions as the administration of the plan's assets. See id., at 890. ERISA's fiduciary duty requirement simply is not implicated where Hughes, acting as the Plan's settlor, makes a decision regarding the form or structure of the Plan such as who is entitled to receive Plan benefits and in what amounts, or how such benefits are calculated. See Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 463 U. S. 85, 91 (1983) (describing how ERISA does not mandate that "employers provide any particular benefits, and does not itself proscribe discrimination in the provision of employee benefits").5 A settlor's powers include the ability to add a new benefit structure to an existing plan. Re-5 Respondents suggest that they may be regarded as cosettlors because they have contributed to the Plan's corpus. However, merely making contributions does not make one akin to a settlor who is responsible for creating the plan. See generally G. Bogert, Law of Trusts and Trustees § 1, p. 4 (rev. 2d ed. 1984) ("The settlor of a trust is the person who intentionally causes it to come into existence" (footnote omitted; emphasis deleted)). Certainly, respondents do not contend that they are responsible for the creation of the Plan.
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