Fast Track: Ex-Merrill lobbyist gets fresh start at FPA

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon helped convince veteran tax lobbyist William DeReuter to retire early from his job as vice president of government relations for Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. of New York.

“I could see the Pentagon burning from my office,” says Mr. DeReuter, 59, who had been Merrill’s Washington-based representative on tax and budget issues since 1986.

“Do I really want to go through what’s coming?” he says he wondered at that time. So Mr. DeReuter retired the following month.

But at the beginning of this month, he returned to work again as a tax lobbyist for the financial services industry.

This time, his title is assistant director of government relations for the Financial Planning Association, the 30,000-member group with offices in Atlanta and Denver that represents financial planners. He replaces Al Campos, who left earlier this year.

“I’m a product of Washington,” says Mr. DeReuter, who grew up in Arlington, Va. “I’m a child of the Senate.”

He served from 1975 to 1978 as press secretary to Sen. William V. Roth Jr., R-Del., and was executive assistant for legislative affairs in the Department of the Treasury from 1981 to 1986. In the latter position, he helped win passage of four major tax bills.

“What I found out is, I’m going to follow this stuff anyway,” Mr. DeReuter says of Washington affairs. “So here I am. I’m back.”

At Merrill Lynch, Mr. DeReuter helped established the Savings Coalition of America, a 75-member organization that lobbies to increase Americans’ savings on behalf of a wide range of financial services, business and other organizations.

He’s currently focusing on a bill – recently introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Ben Cardin, D-Md. – that would make permanent and accelerate higher retirement savings limits enacted in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001.

Congress in recent years has shown increasing willingness to give tax incentives for people to save for their retirement. Mr. DeReuter expects that trend to continue.

“As baby boomers retire, pensions are going to become more and more important,” he says.

“The idea that people will be contributing more of their own money to their own retirements” also will become more crucial.

Mr. DeReuter expects to see a continuing move away from defined-benefit to defined-contribution plans. “Pensions are certainly going to be on the congressional agenda for as long as the eye can see,” he says.

While Congress may run out of time this year to enact the entire Portman-Cardin bill as introduced, some major provisions may be enacted, along with portions that would make it easier for people to handle their retirement savings plans.

Distribution delay

One provision in the bill would allow people to delay until age 75 taking minimum distributions from their retirement plans. Currently, minimum distributions must start at no later than age 701/2, or account holders face severe penalties.

The financial services industry strongly supports the legislation, as it has other bills that provide tax breaks for people to save for retirement.

Mr. DeReuter wins praise from other lobbyists who have worked with him.

“His longtime association in the financial services world will serve him very well with financial planners,” says Liz Varley, Washington-based vice president and director of retirement policy at the Securities Industry Association, which represents the brokerage industry.

“We’re not so much transaction based as we are advice and credential based,” Ms. Varley adds. “He’s representing people who have the skill set that we are using.”