Kerry L. Halpern

Kerry Halpern is an employee benefits and executive compensation attorney in Holland & Knight's Philadelphia and New York offices who represents public and private clients in a large number of industries, including financial services, life sciences, consumer products and technology, throughout the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden and many other countries. She regularly advises compensation committees, executive management, and individual executives in connection with a large assortment of compensation and benefits issues.

Ms. Halpern has significant background in employee benefits issues that arise in the context of mergers and acquisitions, including conversion of equity compensation, transition of benefit plans, and new benefit plan design and issues regarding golden parachute taxes under Section 280G of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). She advises clients with respect to benefit plan design, administration, and compliance, including with respect to qualified and non-qualified deferred compensation plans, the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule, executive employment agreements, incentive compensation plans, equity compensation plans, severance plans and retention plans.

Ms. Halpern also advises clients on disclosure of executive compensation under U.S. securities laws, from the initial public offering (IPO) stage to the ongoing disclosure obligations of large public companies, as well as compensation disclosure and shareholder outreach, and Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) guidelines and potential impact on their say-on-pay shareholder votes. She has substantial knowledge in tax planning with respect to all benefit plans, including deductibility of compensation under Section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code and structuring deferred compensation in compliance with Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code.