News: 2009 2nd Quarter

IFS recently completed an assignment as independent fiduciary and investment manager for a portion of  The Dow Chemical Company Employees'  Savings Plan.   The Rohm & Haas Company  Employee Stock Ownership and Savings Plan was merged into the Dow Plan after the April 1, 2009 merger of the two companies.  The ROH Plan’s ESOP suspense account owned unallocated shares of ROH common stock, for which the Plan received approximately $550 million in cash upon the merger.  The Plan was amended to require that those proceeds be used to purchase shares of Dow common stock.  IFS was engaged to decide on behalf of the Plan whether to proceed with those purchases, and to adopt a protocol for completing them.  IFS determined that purchasing the Dow shares as required by the Plan would not violate ERISA, and completed the transaction by directing the Plan’s trustee to purchase approximately 36.7 million registered shares of Dow common stock directly from Dow at a negotiated price which represented a discount of approximately 14.5% from the NYSE closing price on the date of the purchase.   The Plan incurred no commission costs in connection with the acquisition.