By Jacklyn Wille
A new lawsuit claims CenturyLink Inc. offered its workers a poorly managed and underperforming stock fund in their 401(k) plan that caused them to lose out on retirement savings.
The proposed class action, filed Nov. 30 in a Colorado federal court, challenges a customized fund in CenturyLink's 401(k) plan that invests in the stock of large U.S. companies. The fund's design was seriously flawed because it used five different active fund managers with the same mandate, the lawsuit says. This caused the fund - which allegedly was the only large-cap stock investment in the plan - to consistently underperform its benchmark by 2 percentage points or more each year since 2012, according to the lawsuit.