Bankruptcy

For the law partners at Dewey & LeBoeuf, losing their jobs may be the least of their worries. They are likely to lose the money they were required to invest in the firm. They could lose their pensions.

Josh Gotbaum scored a coup last month for the obscure-but-important federal agency he runs when American Airlines parent AMR Corp. reversed plans to dump its underfunded pension plans on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

Pensions used to be a reliable stream of retirement income, but these twists and turns could put a pension benefit in jeopardy.

Most American Airlines employees can breathe a sigh of relief (sort of), now that the company has announced that it would not seek to terminate three out of four of its pension plans as part of its bankruptcy reorganization. Rather, the company will freeze those plans, meaning that employees will stop earning benefits after a certain date.