Cite as: 510 U. S. 86 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
Lawrence Kill argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was John B. Berringer.*
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents an issue of statutory construction— whether the fiduciary standards stated in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) govern an insurance company's conduct in relation to certain annuity contracts. Fiduciary status under ERISA generally attends the management of "plan assets." The statute, however, contains no comprehensive definition of "plan assets." Our task in this case is to determine the bounds of a statutory exclusion from "plan asset" categorization, an exclusion Congress prescribed for "guaranteed benefit polic[ies]."
The question before us arises in the context of a contract between defendant-petitioner John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company (Hancock) and plaintiff-respondent Harris Trust and Savings Bank (Harris), current trustee of a Sperry Rand Corporation Retirement Plan.1 Pursuant to its con-*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the State of New York et al. by Robert Abrams, Attorney General of New York, and Jerry Boone, Solicitor General, and Scott Harshbarger, Attorney General of Massachusetts; for the American Council of Life Insurance by James F. Jorden, Stephen H. Goldberg, Perry Ian Cone, Waldemar J. Pflepsen, Jr., Richard E. Barnsback, Stephen W. Kraus, and Phillip E. Stano; and for the Life Insurance Council of New York by Theodore R. Groom, Stephen M. Saxon, William F. Hanrahan, William J. Flanagan, and Raymond A. D'Amico.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for Certain United
States Senators and Representatives by Howard M. Metzenbaum, pro se; for the American Association of Retired Persons et al. by Cathy Ventrell-Monsees, Joan S. Wise, Mary Ellen Signorille, and Edgar Pauk; and for the Western Conference of Teamsters Pension Trust Fund by William H. Song, Brigid Carroll Anderson, and Timothy St. Clair Smith.
1 Sperry Rand Corporation has undergone a number of changes in name and corporate form since 1941, when the contract with Hancock was initially made; for convenience, we use in this opinion only the employer-corporation's original name, Sperry.
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