Cite as: 525 U. S. 432 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
ists and respondents do not allege that Hughes used any of the assets for a purpose other than to pay its obligations to the Plan's beneficiaries, Hughes could not have violated the anti-inurement provision under ERISA § 403(c)(1).
B
Each of respondents' fiduciary duty claims must fail because ERISA's fiduciary provisions are inapplicable to the amendments. This conclusion follows from our decision in Spink, where we considered whether amending a plan to require the conditioning of benefit payments under an early retirement program on the participants' release of employment-related claims was a prohibited transaction under ERISA § 406(a). 517 U. S., at 885. We explained:
"Plan sponsors who alter the terms of a plan do not fall into the category of fiduciaries. As we said with respect to the amendment of welfare benefit plans, '[e]mployers or other plan sponsors are generally free under ERISA, for any reason at any time, to adopt, modify, or terminate welfare plans.' When employers undertake those actions, they do not act as fiduciaries, but are analogous to the settlors of a trust." Id., at 890 (quoting Curtiss-Wright, supra, at 78 (citations omitted)).
We made clear in Spink that our reasoning applied both to "pension benefit plans" and "welfare benefit plans," since "[t]he definition of fiduciary makes no distinction between persons exercising authority over" these different types of plans. 517 U. S., at 890-891. Our conclusion applies with equal force to persons exercising authority over a contribu§ 1.414(l)-1(b)(1)(i) (1998). It further provides that "[a] plan is a 'single plan' if and only if, on an ongoing basis, all of the plan assets are available to pay benefits to employees who are covered by the plan." Ibid.; see also 29 CFR § 2520.102-4 (1998) ("[A]n employee benefit plan may provide different benefits for various classes of participants and beneficiaries").
443
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