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Hercules with respect to the plan. This determination letter was
applicable to the amendments to the plan that were adopted on
October 27, 1994.
Hercules made additional amendments to the plan during 2001.
Hercules executed the amended plan on January 28, 2002. The
amended plan’s effective date was January 1, 2001. As of
January 31, 2002, the amended plan had 31,301 participants.
Various “universal provisions” and three schedules of rights
and benefits--Schedule A, Schedule B, and Schedule C–-govern the
amended plan. As relevant here, Article VII of Schedule B sets
forth the payment provisions for those participants falling under
that schedule of the amended plan. Paragraph D of Article VII
provides that an eligible participant may elect to receive his or
her plan benefits as a “51% Partial Cash Payment,” pursuant to
which the present value of 51 percent of the participant’s
accrued benefit is payable as a lump sum (lump-sum payment
option). The remaining 49 percent of the participant’s accrued
benefit is payable in an annuity form.
Prior to amending the plan, Hercules used the published
interest rates used by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC)
to calculate an immediate annuity beginning on the first day of
the first month of the calendar quarter of payment for purposes
of calculating the present value of a participant’s accrued
benefit under the lump-sum payment option. As amended, however,
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Last modified: May 25, 2011