Employee Benefit Plans

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2014

Employee Benefit Plans [Abstract]

Employee Benefit Plans

14. Employee Benefit Plans

The Company offers various postretirement benefits to its employees.

The components of benefit plan expense consisted of the following:

( in thousands)	Three months ended						Nine months ended
	September 30,						September 30,
	2014			2013			2014			2013
Interest cost	$	816		$	910		$	2,528		$	2,586
Expected return on plan assets, net of expenses		(1,144	)		(1,098	)		(3,444	)		(3,274	)
Amortization of net (gain)/loss		291			729			779			2,379
Settlement charges		1,031			1,462			1,031			1,462
Total for defined benefit plans		994			2,003			894			3,153
Supplemental executive retirement plan (“SERP”)		2,148			2,025			4,038			4,163
Defined contribution plans		4,019			3,403			14,091			13,046
Total	$	7,161		$	7,431		$	19,023		$	20,362

Amortization of actuarial losses for our nonqualified supplemental executive retirement plan (“SERP”) totaled $0.6 million in the third quarter of 2014 and $0.7 million in the third quarter of 2013. Year-to-date amortization of actuarial losses totaled $1.6 million in 2014 and $2.1 million in 2013.

We recognized settlement charges related to lump-sum distributions from our defined benefit and SERP retirement plans of $2.2 million in 2014 and $2.4 million in 2013. Settlement charges are recorded when total lump sum distributions for a plan’s year exceed the total projected service cost and interest cost for that plan year.

We contributed $3.5 million to fund current benefit payments for our SERP during the year-to-date period of 2014. We anticipate contributing $1.0 million to fund the SERP’s benefit payments during the remainder of fiscal 2014.

Executive Deferred Compensation Plan

We have an unqualified executive deferred compensation plan that is available to certain management level employees and directors of the Company. Under the plan, participants may elect to defer receipt of a portion of their annual compensation. The deferred compensation plan is intended to be an unfunded plan maintained primarily for the purpose of providing deferred compensation benefits. We may use corporate owned life insurance contracts held in a rabbi trust to support the plan. We have invested $19.0 million within this rabbi trust and purchased $12.8 million of corporate owned life insurance contracts with these assets. The cash surrender value of the company owned life insurance contracts totaled $14.5 million at September 30, 2014 and $13.8 million at December 31, 2013 and are included in “Other assets” in our condensed consolidated balance sheets. Gains or losses related to the insurance contracts are included in the caption “Miscellaneous, net” in our condensed consolidated statement of operations. The unsecured obligation to pay the compensation deferred, adjusted to reflect the positive or negative performance of investment measurement options selected by each participant, totaled $41.3 million at September 30, 2014 and $38.9 million at December 31, 2013, and are included in “Other liabilities” in our condensed consolidated balance sheets.