Buyer Beware: COBRA Obligations in an Asset Purchase
When one company purchases another, there can be significant implications to the obligation to provide health benefits. Former employees of the seller company are typically entitled to continue health benefits under COBRA if they lose coverage as a result of the transaction. The traditional view is that the seller company has the obligation to provide COBRA coverage. But what happens when the seller company ceases operation and terminates its health plan? How do these displaced employees get continuation coverage.
It is not uncommon, in an asset purchase transaction, for the buyer to assume a substantial portion of the operations of the selling company. In many instances, the buyer also agrees to take on and hire former employees of the seller. These types of arrangements give rise to special considerations for employee benefit plans, the continuation of health coverage being one of them.
The COBRA regulations contain a number of regulations explaining what happens to qualified beneficiaries in the event of an asset purchase transaction. 26 CFR 54.4980B-9 includes provisions that deal specifically with continuation rights and obligations in an asset purchase transaction. Included in these regulations is an explanation of instances where the buyer is obligated to provide the continuation coverage under its own plan, even though it may not have ever employed the individual employees.
In the context of a business reorganization, the regulations recognize the existence of a “M&A qualified beneficiary.” In an asset sale, this is someone who has a COBRA qualifying event prior to or in connection with the sale and whose last employment prior to the qualifying event was associated with the assets being sold. Under this definition, an employee working for the seller company who loses coverage as a result of the asset sale (typically through termination of employment) would be an “M&A qualified beneficiary.”
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