2003 WEBA Award
Achievement in Benefits Service
Michael J. Nassau
Michael J. Nassau is the first recipient of the Worldwide Employee Benefits
Network’s (WEB) Excellence in Benefits Award (WEBA) for Achievement in Benefits
Service. Mr. Nassau, a senior partner in the Employee Benefits Department of Kramer
Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, a New-York based law firm, is a current Board member
and Past President of WEB’s New York Chapter. In addition to over 40 years as an
employee benefits attorney, Mr. Nassau contributes his time and expertise to numerous
Bar committees, benefit organizations, and advisory committees.
This inaugural WEBA Award recognizes Mr. Nassau’s untiring work in developing
creative solutions to the practical difficulties of plan administration and the overwhelming
impact of legislation and regulations. Among his accomplishments, Mr. Nassau has
advised national and regional level policy makers, in both the Internal Revenue Service
and the Department of Labor, regarding practical employee benefits operational
procedures and their regulatory implications. As a member of the Pension Liaison
Group of the Northeast Region of the Internal Revenue Service, he was a consistent
lobbyist for revision of the original rigid Service procedures for correcting operating
defects to allow self-correction. Earlier, when the enactment of ERISA required
extensive coordination between government administrators and the benefits community,
Mr. Nassau chaired the Subcommittee on Pension Legislation of the New York City Bar
Association, and went on to serve as co-chair for three years of the Employee Benefits
Committee of the New York State Bar Association.
Mr. Nassau continues to advance the education of those working within the
employee benefits disciplines. As one of the few practitioners already concentrating in
the field when ERISA was enacted, he became and has remained a notable author,
speaker, and occasional chairman on a wide range of programs covering the continuing
flow of new developments. Speaking forums have included, among others, the
Practising Law Institute, New York Law Journal, and New York University Institute on
Federal Taxation, and programs sponsored by the Society of Actuaries, the New York
State and New York City Bar Associations, banking and risk management organizations
and Fortune Magazine, as well as WEB itself. Mr. Nassau’s prolific writings and
speaking engagements, coupled with his broadcast and print media interviews, have
brought recognition to the employee benefits discipline and the professionals who work
within it.
Listed in Best Lawyers in America and in Who’s Who in America, Nassau was
named one of the “25 Top Benefits Lawyers” by the National Law Journal in 1998.
A summa cum laude graduate with a BA from Yale University, Nassau received a J.D.
cum laude from Yale Law School where he was Note and Comment Editor for the Yale
Law Journal.
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