Products October 18, 2010

State Street Unveils ETF Trading Product

October 18, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – State Street Corporation has launched a new service for the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) market to help clients process ETF orders more efficiently.
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A State Street news release said with State Street’s Assisted Trading service, authorized participants, typically market makers or specialists who obtain the underlying assets to create ETFs, can simultaneously enter the ETFs they want to trade and identify any restricted shares via State Street’s FundConnect platform. Restricted shares are securities that are not eligible for proprietary trading and change daily based on underwriting, mergers, investments and other activities. 

Using this capability, according to State Street, the restricted shares are segregated and sent to State Street Global Markets, the company’s investment research and trading arm, to be traded. This process ensures that the authorized participant is completely in compliance with all regulatory and exchange requirements when trading ETFs, the company said.

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The Assisted Trading service is accessed through FundConnect, State Street’s online trading platform for ETFs, which is integrated with State Street’s transfer agency recordkeeping platform. The transfer agent releases the approved orders to the ETF accounting platform and the depository via DTCC Fast.

Benefits October 18, 2010

Walmart Sued for Firing Employee over Cancer-Related Disability

October 18, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has accused Walmart of firing a longtime employee because of a cancer-related disability and in retaliation for complaining about the discrimination.
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According to an EEOC lawsuit, the employee had successfully worked as a forklift operator at a Walmart distribution center in Midway, Tennessee, for 12 years. He was a productive worker for three years following cancer surgery which left him with weakness in his right shoulder and arm.   

An EEOC press release said that on November 24, 2008, Walmart asked the former employee to relieve a shipping department employee for a 20-minute break. Because his cancer surgery left him unable to manually lift, he could not replace the worker at this task. He then requested the reasonable accommodation of remaining in the forklift operator position he had worked for his entire career at Walmart, where no manual lifting was done, but Walmart refused his request.  

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Instead, according to the agency, Walmart removed him from his forklift position, declared he could not perform the essential functions of his job, and placed him on unpaid leave. Ironically, on the same day it issued him an “outstanding” work evaluation.   

According to the announcement, the man continued to request an accommodation, and then filed a discrimination charge. Shortly thereafter, Walmart discharged him because of his disability and in retaliation for complaining about Walmart’s failure to accommodate him, according to the EEOC.

The lawsuit asks the court to grant a permanent injunction enjoining Walmart from failing to provide a reasonable accommodation for disability, discharging an employee due to a disability, and retaliating against any employee for complaining about the refusal to provide a reasonable accommodation. The lawsuit also seeks appropriate back wages and compensatory and punitive damages for the former employee.

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