Bio

Richard Helmreich counsels clients on business issues including strategic growth initiatives, merger and acquisition opportunities, and corporate finance prospects. He spends significant time serving on several different boards of directors/advisors. Rich serves as chair of Porter Wright's Employee Benefits Practice Group, where he regularly advises employers on the full range of their employee benefit plan issues. In the tax-qualified retirement plan area, Rich has assisted employers in the design and implementation of tax-qualified retirement plans of all types, including defined benefit pension plans, profit sharing plans, 401(k) plans, money purchase pension plans, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), collectively bargained union plans and 403(b) tax deferred account plans for tax-exempt organizations. Rich has substantial experience with leveraged ESOP transactions. In the health and welfare plan area, Rich has assisted employers with the implementation of group health, dental, long term disability and group term life insurance benefits, including the design of self-insured medical benefits plans, cafeteria plans, tax-exempt VEBA trusts and third-party administration agreements. In the nonqualified plan and executive compensation area, Rich has designed comprehensive management incentive programs with stock options, stock appreciation rights, phantom stock and restricted stock. He has prepared nonqualified deferred compensation plans, supplemental executive retirement plans, excess benefit plans and individualized deferred compensation arrangements to provide targeted tax deferred compensation to executive management teams. Of particular significance, Rich has substantial experience in mergers and acquisitions and securities laws as they relate to employee benefit plans. In the securities practice, he has assisted employers in implementing employer stock based plans, including participant-directed employer stock investment funds in profit sharing and 401(k) plans, and employee stock purchase plans while addressing the Form S-8 registration statement and Form 11-K annual report filing requirements. In 2007, Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao appointed Rich to a three-year term on the Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans, also known as the ERISA Advisory Council. Rich has also received recognition in Best Lawyers® and is AV Preeminent rated by Martindale-Hubbell®. He is also listed in Chambers USA as one of the leading attorneys in Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Law. Rich has been named a Best Lawyers® 2021 Columbus, OH Employee Benefits (ERISA) Law “Lawyer of the Year.”