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satisfy employee claims. The record also demonstrates that
amounts were not transferred into the Suspense Account based on
exposure to risk, and that the Suspense Account did not serve to
spread among the participating employers the risk of incurring
DWB's.
Even if one were to assume arguendo that the Suspense
Account did serve to shift some risk, our view would not change.
We are unable to find that any such shift would have been
meaningful. As a point of fact, the risk of severance never
shifted from the employers to the Trust.15 The Trust never
assumed any risk of loss for any amount placed therein.
Contributions never provided a meaningful benefit to persons
other than the contributing employer's employees. Although it is
true that actuarial gains were pooled in the Suspense Account to
supplement underfunded benefits of other employers, we do not
believe that this pooling technique shifted risk significantly.
As a point of fact, less than 0.1 percent of the benefits came
from the Suspense Account.
Accordingly, we hold that the Prime Plan is not within the
requirements of section 419A(f)(6). Thus, the participating
15 In this regard, we disagree with Mr. Barnhart, who
testified that he believed the Suspense Account operated to share
the risk of severance among employers. Relying on this belief,
Mr. Barnhart concluded that the Suspense Account operated to make
the Prime Plan a single plan. Mr. Barnhart agreed, however,
that, absent the shift of severance through the Suspense Account,
the Prime Plan would be an aggregation of separate plans.
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