You Own Wall Street › Employer plans › Stater Bros. Markets
Stater Bros. Markets 401(k) retirement plan: the investment options
Does your 401(k) vote the way you would? $104m of the $107m in the Stater Bros. Markets 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
1,117 people have a balance in the Stater Bros. Markets 401(k), and it holds $107m. Of the $106m whose vehicle the plan reports, 98.5% sits in funds that publish no record of how they voted your shares — collective trusts and separate accounts, which unlike a mutual fund file no Form N-PX and leave no public trace of a single vote.
SourceThe plan’s own annual report to the Department of Labor — Form 5500, Schedule H, plan year 2024 · filed by STATER BROS. MARKETS as “401(K) PLAN FOR SALARIED EMPLOYEES OF STATER BROS.” · EIN 952586175, plan number 005 · search the filings
| What the plan holds | Voting record | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Pooled separate accounts | NONE | $84m |
| Insurance company general account | NONE | $20m |
| Registered funds (mutual funds and ETFs) | PUBLISHED | $2m |
| Participant loans | No shares to vote | $1m |
Every asset class the plan itemised on Schedule H, straight from the filing. These are categories, not fund names: Schedule H asks what KIND of vehicle the money is in, never which one, which is why no fund is named on this page.
Why there is no list of Stater Bros. Markets’s funds anywhere
Some employers file a Form 11-K with the SEC each year, and it contains a schedule naming every investment in the 401(k), fund by fund. Stater Bros. Markets does not file one, and that is not an oversight: a plan only has to file an 11-K when interests in it are registered securities, which in practice means the 401(k) offers a company stock fund. Plans that pay equity as RSUs outside the plan, as most large technology employers do, never trigger the requirement.
So the only public account of this plan is the Form 5500 above, which reports what categories the money sits in and never which funds. That is the whole reason this page can tell you 98.5% of the identified money votes in secret and cannot tell you which manager cast those votes.
Why the secrecy, and what you can do
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.
Check whether your plan offers any registered mutual 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 →
CoverageThe plan reports the vehicle for 100% of its assets.
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.