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AES 401(k) retirement plan: the investment options

Does your 401(k) vote the way you would? $188m of the $226m in the AES plan votes in secret. Fidelity 500 Index Fund, the most common fund in the plans we track, publishes every vote: answer 3 of its ballots, then see your result.

The question on the ballot

As filed

The AES 401(k) holds $226m. Of the $188m we could identify from the plan’s own filing, every dollar sits in a fund that publishes no record of how it voted your shares — collective trusts, which unlike a mutual fund file no Form N-PX and leave no public trace of a single vote.

SourceAES’s own annual retirement-plan filing with the SEC (Form 11-K, Schedule of Assets) · open the filing

What the plan holdsVehicleVoting recordValue
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Retirement 2030 Trust G **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $36m
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Retirement 2025 Trust G **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $24m
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Retirement 2035 Trust G **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $22m
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Retirement 2040 Trust G **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $16m
State Street Global Advisorslisted as “S P 500 Index SL SF Fund, X **” Not identified from the filing Not counted either way $14m
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Structured Research Common Trust Fund, F **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $13m
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Retirement 2045 Trust G **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $13m
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Retirement 2020 Trust G **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $13m
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Retirement 2050 Trust G **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $11m
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Stable Value Common Trust Fund, N **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $9m
T. Rowe Price Trust Companylisted as “Retirement 2055 Trust G **” Collective trust or separate account NONE $8m
Charles Schwablisted as “Self-Directed Brokerage Mutual Funds **” Brokerage window Whatever the saver buys $7m

The 12 largest holdings in the plan. “Vehicle” is the description the filing itself gives each investment.

Why there is nothing to show

A mutual fund has to file Form N-PX every year listing every vote it cast on your behalf. A collective investment trust does not. It is a bank-run vehicle sold only inside retirement plans, it is cheaper, and it is now where most 401(k) default money sits — including most target-date funds, which is where savers who never chose anything are put.

So the shares bought with AES employees’ retirement savings are voted every proxy season — on executive pay, on board seats, on climate and workforce proposals — and there is no public document anywhere recording how. This is not an oversight by AES; it is what the disclosure rules currently require, which is to say: nothing.

What you can do

Check whether your plan offers any registered fund as an alternative — those publish their records, and you can read them here. If it does not, the menu itself is the thing that has to change, and that is a decision made by the plan’s fiduciary committee, not by you alone.

See how funds that do publish voted →

CoverageWe classified 91.9% of this plan’s assets from the filing. The figure above is the share of the money we could classify; anything we could not identify is excluded from it rather than assumed either way.

Other employer plans

The largest employer plans on the site, and a few more. Each page shows what the plan’s funds did with the shares its savers paid for.

Microsoft 401(k)$64.92bn in the planBank of America 401(k)248,103 savers · $62.90bnJPMorgan Chase 401(k)297,359 savers · $52.91bnGoogle 401(k)154,637 savers · $48.74bnWells Fargo 401(k)$43.80bn in the planAmazon 401(k)943,213 savers · $34.59bnInternational Business Machines 401(k)$28.25bn in the planIntel 401(k)$26.91bn in the planUnited Community Banks 401(k)3,579 savers · $295mMettler Toledo International Inc/ 401(k)$883m in the planQuest Diagnostics 401(k)$5.87bn in the planBaxter Healthcare of Puerto Rico 401(k)2,597 savers · $103mMenard 401(k)6,156 savers · $283mRevvity 401(k)$841m in the plan