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International Flavors & Fragrances 401(k) retirement plan: the investment options

Does your 401(k) vote the way you would? $1.02bn of the $1.13bn in the International Flavors & Fragrances 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

International Flavors & Fragrances 401(k) match and balances, from the filing

Company money in
about $5,810 per active participant
$31m in plan year 2024
Employees saved
about $10,530 each
$56m in plan year 2024
Average balance
$143,900
6,809 people with a balance
In the plan
$980m
at the end of plan year 2024

Company money is the match plus any other employer contributions, averaged over all 5,363 active participants, including anyone who did not contribute. The filing reports dollars, not the match formula; the plan’s summary plan description states the formula.

SourceThe plan’s annual report to the Department of Labor — Form 5500, Schedule H, plan year 2024 · filed by INTERNATIONAL FLAVORS & FRAGRANCES INC. as “INTERNATIONAL FLAVORS & FRAGRANCES INC. RETIREMENT INVESTMENT FUND PLAN” · EIN 131432060, plan number 001 · search the filings

The International Flavors & Fragrances 401(k) holds $1.13bn. Of the $1.08bn we could identify from the plan’s own filing, 94.4% sits in funds that publish no record of how they voted your shares — collective trusts, which unlike a mutual fund file no Form N-PX and leave no public trace of a single vote.

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

What the plan holdsVehicleVoting recordValue
State Street S&P 500 Index Securities Lending Series Fund Class IIlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $244m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2030 Trust IIlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $115m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Trust IIlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $98m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2040 Trust IIlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $89m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 Trust IIlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $86m
State Street Global All Cap Equity Ex-U.S. Index Securities Lending Series Fund Class IIlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $66m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2025 Trust IIlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $64m
Vanguard Federal Money Market Fundlisted as “Mutual Fund” Registered fund PUBLISHED $60m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 Trust IIlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $60m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Trust IIlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $55m
State Street U.S. Bond Index Securities Lending Series Fund Class XIVlisted as “Common/Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $41m
Fidelity BrokerageLink (line 1c15)listed as “Mutual Fund” Brokerage window Whatever the saver buys $31m

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 International Flavors & Fragrances 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 International Flavors & Fragrances; 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 100% 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.

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