442
Opinion of the Court
"[T]he assets of a plan [except as otherwise provided in the statute] shall never inure to the benefit of any employer and shall be held for the exclusive purposes of providing benefits to participants in the plan and their beneficiaries and defraying reasonable expenses of administering the plan." § 403(c)(1); 29 U. S. C. § 1103(c)(1).
As the language makes clear, the section focuses exclusively on whether fund assets were used to pay pension benefits to plan participants, without distinguishing either between benefits for new and old employees under one or more benefit structures of the same plan, or between assets that make up a plan's surplus as opposed to those needed to fund the plan's benefits. Respondents do not dispute that Hughes used fund assets for the sole purpose of paying pension benefits to Plan participants. Furthermore, at all times, Hughes satisfied its continuing obligation under the provisions of the Plan and ERISA to assure that the Plan was adequately funded. See Plan § 6.2; ERISA § 302, 29 U. S. C. § 1082. In other words, Hughes did not act impermissibly by using surplus assets from the contributory structure to add the non-contributory structure to the Plan. The act of amending a pre-existing plan cannot as a matter of law create two de facto plans if the obligations (both preamendment and post-amendment) continue to draw from the same single, unsegre-gated pool or fund of assets. ERISA provides an employer with broad authority to amend a plan, see Curtiss-Wright Corp. v. Schoonejongen, 514 U. S. 73, 78 (1995), and nowhere suggests that an amendment creating a new benefit structure also creates a second plan.4 Because only one plan ex-4 Our conclusion is consistent with other Government pronouncements in this area. For example, the Internal Revenue Service has promulgated a treasury regulation that provides, for income tax purposes, a pension plan will not fail to be a "single plan" merely because the "plan has several distinct benefit structures." Treas. Reg. § 1.414(l)-1(b)(1)(i), 26 CFR
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