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Linde 401(k) retirement plan: the investment options
Does your 401(k) vote the way you would? $2.36bn of the $3.15bn in the Linde 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
Linde 401(k) match and balances, from the filing
- Company money in
- about $4,200 per active participant
- $48m in plan year 2024
- Employees saved
- about $8,730 each
- $99m in plan year 2024
- Average balance
- $184,000
- 15,998 people with a balance
- In the plan
- $2.94bn
- at the end of plan year 2024
Company money is the match plus any other employer contributions, averaged over all 11,323 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 LINDE INC. as “LINDE RETIREMENT SAVINGS PLAN” · EIN 061249050, plan number 334 · search the filings
The Linde 401(k) holds $3.15bn. Of the $2.38bn we could identify from the plan’s own filing, 99.1% 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.
SourceLinde’s own annual retirement-plan filing with the SEC (Form 11-K, Schedule of Assets) · open the filing
| What the plan holds | Vehicle | Voting record | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linde Stocklisted as “Ordinary Shares **” | Not identified from the filing | Not counted either way | $626m |
| Northern Trust S&P 500 Indexlisted as “Common Trust **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $363m |
| BlackRock Lifepath Index 2035listed as “Common Trust **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $271m |
| BlackRock Lifepath Index 2030listed as “Common Trust **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $269m |
| BlackRock Lifepath Index Retirementlisted as “Common Trust **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $252m |
| Northern Trust Collective Russell 1000 Growth Index Fundlisted as “Common Trust **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $194m |
| BlackRock Lifepath Index 2040listed as “Common Trust **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $186m |
| BlackRock Lifepath Index 2045listed as “Common Trust **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $156m |
| Prudential Stable Value Fundlisted as “Stable Value Fund **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $143m |
| BlackRock Lifepath Index 2050listed as “Common Trust **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $130m |
| BlackRock Lifepath Index 2055listed as “Common Trust **” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $92m |
| BrokerageLinklisted as “Self-Directed Brokerage Account **” | Brokerage window | Whatever the saver buys | $84m |
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 Linde 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 Linde; 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 80.1% 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.