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BUSINESS NEWS

ministration’s life-expectancy

calculator indicates for a

woman my age.

Prof. Olshansky says calcu-

lators often produce exagger-

ated results because they as-

sign “longevity credits” for

each factor that is positively

associated with longevity and

add the credits. “In the real

world, these variables are not

additive,” he said.

Using a methodology that

weights the results according

to their correlations to lon-

gevity, Prof. Olshansky ad-

vised on the development of

a calculator for a startup

The court sided with Mr. Su-

lyma, who worked at Intel from

2010 to 2012 and “testified

that he did not remember re-

viewing the relevant disclo-

sures,” the opinion said.

The case will return to a

lower court. A spokeswoman

for Intel declined to comment.

The decision means it isn’t

enough for an employer to send

disclosures to start the three-

year statute of limitations, Mr.

Kreps said. Instead, an em-

ployee has to have read the in-

formation and understood it for

the window for filing lawsuits

to begin, he added.

The decision may encourage

companies to outsource their

401(k) plans by joining so-called

multiple-employer plans, said

Lew Minsky, president of the

Defined Contribution Institu-

tional Investment Association,

an advocacy group for consul-

tants in the 401(k) industry.

Employee Retirement Income

Security Act, a federal law that

applies to private employers’

retirement plans.

At issue is a provision in the

law that gives 401(k) partici-

pants three years to file a law-

suit after obtaining “actual

knowledge” that an employer

has allegedly breached its fidu-

ciary duty to manage the plan

in employees’ best interests,

said the opinion, written by

Justice Samuel Alito.

The case alleges Intel

breached its fiduciary duties

when it invested a portion of

employees’ contributions in

higher-fee investments, includ-

ing hedge funds, private equity

and commodities, within the

target-date funds that serve as

the plan’s default investments.

Intel argued the case should be

dismissed, citing the three year

deadline after Christopher Su-

lyma received disclosures.

A Supreme Court decision in
a case againstIntelCorp. alleg-
ing problems in its 401(k) plan
is likely to pave the way for
more litigation over retirement
plans, industry watchers say.
Wednesday’s decision “has
pretty significant ramifications
for people’s ability to bring
lawsuits over fiduciary
breaches,” said Michael Kreps,
a principal at Groom Law
Group who specializes in re-
tirement-plan law.
In recent years, employees
have launched a wave of law-
suits that have resulted in mul-
timillion-dollar settlements
against companies. Many of
those suits alleged the plans
had high fees.
Wednesday’s unanimous de-
cision in Intel v. Sulyma con-
cerned a statute of limitations
for filing lawsuits under the

BYANNETERGESEN

Court Ruling Opens Door for

More to Sue Over 401(k) Fees

while sometimes also dealing

with frustrated clients.

Mr. Robbins seems to be

making a different calculation.

Last year, his flagship hedge

fund gained 33%, topping the

overall stock market, according

to a letter sent to the firm’s in-

vestors. So far this year, this

fund is down more than 3%, in

line with the market.

Mr. Robbins, who recently

turned 62 years old, said he de-

cided it was time to close his

firm and establish a family of-

fice. “It felt like a good time to

wrap up,” he said. “I want to do

something else, though I’m not

sure what it will be.”

Activist investor Clifton S.
Robbins is closing his firm, the
latest high-profile veteran to
exit the hedge-fund business.
Mr. Robbins, who manages
$2 billion at Blue Harbour
GroupLP, will inform clients of
his decision on Friday morning,
he says.
Over the past few years, in-
vestors including Louis Bacon,
Jeffrey Vinik, Eric Mindich,
Richard Perry, Jonathon Jacob-
son and Jack Meyer have
handed clients’ cash back, end-
ing storied careers as money
managers. David Tepper, Leon
Cooperman and others have
transformed their firms into
family offices that largely will
invest the billionaires’ own
money.
The shifts come as older in-
vestors who have accumu-
lated significant wealth decide
it isn’t worth the struggle try-
ing to beat a market that until
recently only seemed to rise,

BYGREGORYZUCKERMAN

Investor Robbins Set

To Close Hedge Fund

‘It felt like a

good time to

wrap up,’ says

Clifton Robbins

Blue Harbour

Group’s CEO

and founder.

RETIREMENT REPORT|By Anne Tergesen

Plan Finances by Forecasting Your Lifespan

No one
knows how
long they will
liveorhow
healthy they
will be, which
makes retirement planning
tricky. But a growing number
of online tools and services
are aiming to help people ob-
tain personalized lifespan es-
timates for financial plan-
ning.
Startups are selling tools
that incorporate genetic and
other tests that assess the
probability of getting Alzhei-
mer’s disease or reaching ad-
vanced ages. Calculators ask
about wealth and education,
which studies show are asso-
ciated with life expectancy.
“No one can predict defini-
tively how long someone is
going to live,” said S. Jay
Olshansky, a professor at the
University of Illinois who has
ties to two startups that pro-
vide individualized projec-
tions. “But we can say, ‘For
someone your age and gen-
der, with your level of income
and education, your body-
mass index and sleep and ex-
ercise patterns, this is what
science tells us you are likely
to experience.’ ”
How long we live and how
many of those years are
healthy are two of the “big-
gest unknowns in retirement
income planning,” said
Moshe Milevsky, a finance
professor at York University
in Toronto who advocates us-
ing biological measures of
aging to refine retirement
planning.
Armed with more precise
life-expectancy forecasts, in-
dividuals can make better-in-
formed judgments about
when to retire and claim So-
cial Security, how much to
save and spend and whether
to buy an annuity or long-
term-care or life insurance,
said Prof. Milevsky.
Some advisers say this
technology won’t change
their approach because their
clients need to be prepared

for a range of outcomes.

Someone in poor health

might live to 95, or have a

spouse with longevity, said fi-

nancial adviser William Bern-

stein.

Still, I found these tools

helpful in stress-testing my

financial plan. Here’s what I

discovered in this emerging

space—and how I plan to use

the results.

Calculators

To figure out how much

workers need to save for re-

tirement, many financial ad-

visers start with an estimate

of lifespan. Many rely on

population life-expectancy

figures, then add some num-

ber of years to reflect a cli-

ent’s family history of lon-

gevity or worries about

outliving savings.

Using an online calculator

that asks the obvious ques-

tions, including age and gen-

der, along with ones about

friendships, marital status,

stress, education, blood pres-

sure and more, I was told to

expect to live to 103. That’s

almost two decades longer

than the Social Security Ad-

called Wealthspan Advisors.

Mainly geared to financial

advisers, the company is pre-

paring to launch and plans to

make the tool free to advisers

that affiliate with it. It intends

to sell financial products, in-

cluding life insurance, and an-

alyze test results from

23andMeInc. to identify

genes associated with longev-

ity and Alzheimer’s for up to

$175, said Chief Executive Kirk

Ashburn.

Wealthspan’s calculator

took into account my height,

weight, marital status and

the number of hours I typi-

cally sleep and exercise daily.

Prof. Olshansky also asked

questions including my total

years of education or have

lost the ability to perform

any “activities of daily liv-

ing,” such as dressing or

bathing. The process gave me

an estimated lifespan of 88

years.

If I were to take a genetic

test and discover I have the

FOX03 gene, which is associ-

ated with longevity, Prof.

Olshansky said he would

raise my odds of living past

age 90.

The bad news is that I

should assume about three to

four years of poor health at

the end of my life.

That is “what we see on

average for people your age”

with no difficulties handling

activities of daily living, he

said. Given my exercise hab-

its, that period of illness

might be shorter, he added.

Medical-style tests

More companies are col-

lecting blood or saliva to ana-

lyze internal indicators of ag-

ing, including longevity genes

and the length of a person’s

telomeres, bits of DNA that

protect chromosomes from

damage. The goal is to shed

light on the pace of aging

and the likelihood of develop-

ing diseases.

Prof. Milevsky said his

wife recently gave him a te-

lomere kit for his 50th birth-

day. He spit into a tube and

six weeks later, the com-

pany—which he declines to

name—notified him that his

“biological age,” based on the

length of his telomeres, was

42.

Steven Austad, scientific

director at the American Fed-

eration for Aging Research

and a scientific adviser to

Wealthspan, said genetic

tests are “somewhat predic-

tive.” Mr. Austad said he has

high hopes for a relatively

new technology that tracks

markers on DNA that can in-

dicate biological age.

But he and others have

reservations about using te-

lomere length, which short-

ens over time, to predict life

expectancy. It varies between

individuals, making compari-

sons to a median for the pop-

ulation of limited use, and is

best measured over time.

Using the results

Because I have a lot of

long-lived relatives and exer-

cise a lot, I have always as-

sumed I’m likely to live into

my late 80s or maybe even

my 90s. Getting estimates

that confirm that hunch

makes me more confident in

my plan to delay retirement

and Social Security, and con-

tribute the maximum to my

health savings account, a tax-

advantaged savings account

for medical expenses that I

can use now or in retirement.

If I were to test positive

for the APOE4 gene that puts

people at higher risk for Alz-

heimer’s, I would consider

changing my financial plan to

add long-term-care insurance.

But Prof. Austad’s observa-

tion that “there is so much

randomness to when people

die” also makes me want to

hedge my bets—not by sav-

ing less or retiring earlier,

but by ticking off the items

on my bucket list now.

There’s only so much you can

plan.

SELMAN DESIGN

Cisco Systems Inc. has

started a new round of job cuts

as the networking-equipment

maker faces the prospect of

slowing sales growth because

of economic uncertainty.

The layoffs, Cisco told The

Wall Street Journal on Thurs-

day, are “part of an ongoing

process of aligning our invest-

ments and resources to meet

the evolving needs of our cus-

tomers and partners.” The com-

pany, which has around 75,000

employees, declined to say how

many people were affected or

what roles they hold.

The San Jose, Calif., com-

pany said this month it expects

revenue to drop between 1.5%

and 3.5% in its current quarter.

The job cuts come as Cisco

changes its sales focus from

hardware such as servers, rout-

ers and other gear to software

services.

BYAARONTILLEY

Cisco Starts

New Round

Of Layoffs

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