Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership | This website contains attorney advertising.

Overview

Mona Ghude helps corporate and private employers craft and administer benefits on behalf of diverse employee groups that make up today’s workforce. She advises on creating fair and financially sound defined contribution, defined benefit and equity-based plans and provides counsel on plan asset rules, deferred compensation and employee classification issues. Mona also provides counsel on the risks and value of benefit plans in corporate transactions and represents high-level executives in negotiating employment, change-of-control and severance agreements.

Integral to Mona’s practice are the following services:

  • Creating qualified plan documents and amendments, including union and foreign-employee recipients
  • Customizing qualified plan benefits for subsidiary employees
  • Establishing defined contribution and defined benefit nonqualified plans
  • Identifying and resolving documentary and operational plan compliance issues
  • Establishing equity-based plans
  • Advising public company employers on governance and shareholder approval issues
  • Advising on corporate transactions and credit agreements regarding benefit plan risks, representations and warranties as well as foreign benefit plan issues
  • Evaluating and negotiating service provider agreements

Mona also counsels on the legality of hedge fund offering documents from the perspective of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) and provides training to plan fiduciaries to help them meet their fiduciary obligations under ERISA and to avoid potential prohibited transaction issues under ERISA and the IRC.

Credentials

Bar Admissions

Pennsylvania

Education

University of Pennsylvania Law School
J.D. (1999)

Osmania University
B.Com. (1990)

Insights & Events

Other Perspectives
  • Women of Color in the Law
    South Asian Bar Association, February 2021

Firm Blog Contributions

  • Spotlight on Benefits – a blog offering practical insight on legal developments which impact benefit plans

Leadership & Community

Firm Leadership

  • Benefits Committee 
  • Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP — Vice Chair, Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation

Honors

  • Chambers USA — Pennsylvania, Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation, 2022-24
  • The Philadelphia Inquirer — Legal Industry Leader in Tax/ERISA, 2018-19
Awards Methodology
No aspect of these recognitions has been approved by the highest court of any state.