White Oak Global Advisors is now at the center of not one but three significant legal proceedings — a combination that makes it one of the more closely watched names in private credit litigation. The most consequential of these began in 2018 when the New York State Nurses Association Pension Plan (NYSNAPP) filed an ERISA arbitration claim alleging that White Oak had breached its fiduciary duties while managing $80 million in pension assets. The case produced a $96 million arbitration award, a federal court confirmation, and a Second Circuit ruling in May 2024 that resolved an open question in ERISA arbitration law — while also partially sending one portion of the award back for further review.
Separately, a $1 billion malpractice lawsuit against law firm King & Spalding, filed in January 2026, and a $40 million judgment White Oak itself won in July 2025, round out a litigation profile that is still actively evolving.
This article documents each case accurately, based on published court records and reporting, in the order of their legal significance.
The NYSNAPP Case: Background
White Oak Global Advisors, LLC is a San Francisco-based private credit firm founded in 2007 by CEO Andre Hakkak. The firm specializes in direct lending to small and mid-sized businesses across healthcare, manufacturing, and technology.
In late 2013, the New York State Nurses Association Pension Plan — an ERISA multi-employer retirement fund — retained White Oak as an investment manager. The plan’s then-Chief Investment Officer, Russell Niemie, recommended the engagement, and the Trustees signed a two-year IMA (investment management agreement) effective December 31, 2013, giving White Oak sole discretion over $80 million in plan assets.
That relationship became the foundation of the lawsuit.
The Conflict of Interest That Triggered the Case
As the original two-year IMA approached expiration in late 2015, White Oak and Niemie were in communication about a potential renewal. What the Trustees did not know was that Niemie and Hakkak were simultaneously discussing his personal employment at White Oak.
On December 2, 2015, Niemie agreed to travel to White Oak’s San Francisco headquarters to discuss employment. One day later — on December 3 — he transmitted a memorandum to the Trustees recommending that the plan renew its IMA with White Oak. The Trustees accepted his recommendation, the renewed IMA took effect January 1, 2016, and shortly afterward, Niemie executed an employment contract with White Oak as its vice chairman.
Neither Niemie nor Hakkak disclosed these employment discussions to the Trustees at any point during the renewal process.
In 2017, the plan’s incoming CIO learned of the undisclosed conflict, and the Trustees terminated White Oak as manager. The review that followed also uncovered additional problems: White Oak had placed plan assets into subscription feeder funds under terms that contradicted the IMA — including lock-up periods of five to seven years that directly overrode the plan’s contractual right to a short exit window.
The ERISA Violations: What the Arbitrator Found
The plan was filed for arbitration in July 2018. After a week-long hearing before the American Arbitration Association in New York, the arbitrator issued a Partial Final Award on November 30, 2020, largely in the Trustees’ favor.
The violations fell into four categories:
1. Failure to return plan assets on termination
White Oak retained plan assets after the IMA was terminated. The arbitrator found this violated ERISA Section 403(b), which requires fiduciaries to hold plan assets in trust and return them on demand.
2. Lock-up provisions that contradicted the IMA
White Oak had used subscription agreements to impose multi-year lock-ups on the plan’s capital. The arbitrator found these terms directly contradicted the IMA’s exit rights — a violation of ERISA Section 406(b)(1), which prohibits a fiduciary from dealing with plan assets for its own account or benefit.
3. Unauthorized fee collection
White Oak continued charging management fees after the IMA had been terminated while still holding the assets. Certain “Day One” fees collected at the outset were also disallowed because the IMA’s text explicitly prohibited that compensation category.
4. Undisclosed conflict of interest
The Niemie-Hakkak employment negotiations — conducted while Niemie held fiduciary authority over the plan’s manager selection and renewal — constituted a prohibited transaction under ERISA. A fiduciary cannot make recommendations affecting plan assets while simultaneously pursuing personal financial benefits from the counterparty receiving those assets.
The $96 Million Award and District Court Confirmation
White Oak paid the approximately $96 million arbitration award on August 4, 2021. The amount covered the return of plan assets, repayment of unauthorized fees, prejudgment interest, and attorneys’ fees.
White Oak then moved to vacate the award in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, arguing the plan had not achieved meaningful success and that it should have been treated as the prevailing party. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan rejected that argument and confirmed the award in a March 17, 2022, ruling, applying the “barely colorable justification” standard that governs judicial review of arbitration awards.
The district court also awarded the Trustees additional attorneys’ fees, finding White Oak’s arguments to be “meritless,” “entirely unpersuasive,” and even “borderline sanctionable.”
The Second Circuit Ruling — What It Actually Said
White Oak appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and on May 21, 2024, the court issued its opinion in Trustees of NYSNAPP v. White Oak Global Advisors, LLC, No. 22-1783.
The ruling had three distinct parts — and the original reporting on this case has frequently oversimplified it:
1. What the Second Circuit affirmed
Federal jurisdiction over the Trustees’ petition to confirm the arbitration award under ERISA Section 502(a)(3). This resolved an open circuit question following the Supreme Court’s Badgerow v. Walters decision, which had eliminated the standard “look-through” approach to FAA arbitration jurisdiction. The Second Circuit held that ERISA’s own statutory text independently confers federal court authority, regardless of whether the FAA provides a separate basis.
2. What the Second Circuit upheld
The core findings of fiduciary breach, the return of plan assets, the fee disallowances, and the substantial prejudgment interest component. The fundamental finding of breach and the bulk of the financial penalty stood.
3. What the Second Circuit partially reversed and remanded
The court sent the “profits” portion of the award back to the lower court for clarification, and it reversed the district court’s award of attorneys’ fees during the confirmation proceedings, finding the lower court had not sufficiently justified that component.
The net result: the $96 million payment White Oak made in August 2021 remained intact in substance, but the case was not a clean, total affirmance — a distinction that matters for anyone analyzing how the Second Circuit treated the fee-shifting and profits disgorgement questions.
What Happened to Russell Niemie
The case had direct professional consequences for the plan’s former CIO.
Niemie had joined White Oak as vice chairman after the IMA renewal, later becoming its chief risk officer. In December 2020 — while the NYSNAPP arbitration award was being issued — he was hired as CIO of the $27.4 billion New Jersey Police and Firemen’s Retirement System, a role for which New Jersey’s investment committee was apparently unaware of the ERISA findings.
When the federal district court confirmed the $96 million award in March 2022, the New Jersey pension system launched an ethics investigation. Niemie resigned shortly thereafter.
His trajectory illustrates a specific risk that ERISA cases of this type expose: undisclosed conflicts of interest established in arbitration proceedings are a matter of public record, and they follow individuals to subsequent fiduciary roles regardless of where those proceedings occurred.
The King & Spalding Lawsuit (Filed January 2026)
While the NYSNAPP appeal was still working through the Second Circuit, an entirely different dispute was developing inside White Oak’s own organization.
White Oak Global Advisors filed a high-stakes legal malpractice lawsuit in New York County Supreme Court against King & Spalding LLP and former partner Terry Novetsky, seeking more than $1 billion in total damages — including at least $500 million in punitive damages.
According to the complaint, White Oak engaged King & Spalding for legal representation related to a healthcare-based investment fund. The suit alleges that Novetsky secretly aided Isaac Soleimani, then-CEO of White Oak Healthcare, in a scheme to shift ownership control of the fund away from White Oak and its shareholders.
Central to the allegations is that Novetsky and Soleimani conducted private communications through personal Gmail accounts — a detail White Oak’s legal team describes as evidence of the covert nature of the alleged misconduct. The complaint further claims this conduct prevented White Oak from successfully launching two major healthcare investment funds.
As of the latest filings, King & Spalding has not publicly responded to the lawsuit or issued an official statement regarding the allegations. The case remains in early proceedings with no ruling on the merits.
White Oak v. Clarke: The $40 Million Judgment (2025)
A separate case — less covered but significant — positions White Oak as a creditor rather than a defendant.
In White Oak Global Advisors LLC v. Clarke, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York granted White Oak’s motion for summary judgment on July 29, 2025, entering final judgment of $20 million against each of T. Clarke and A. Clarke — a combined $40 million award.
This case arose from unpaid obligations under loan guarantee agreements. The Clarkes had argued that prior asset sales might have covered the debt, but the court found no material dispute of fact that precluded summary judgment in White Oak’s favor.
The outcome illustrates that White Oak’s litigation profile is not one-dimensional. The firm is simultaneously a defendant in significant regulatory and malpractice proceedings and an active, successful plaintiff in its own debt recovery matters.
What This Means for Fiduciary Standards
The NYSNAPP case is cited in ERISA compliance discussions for reasons that extend beyond the dollar amount.
- ERISA does not require fraud or intentional deception. The arbitrator found the violation complete at the point Niemie began negotiating employment while holding authority over White Oak’s engagement — regardless of intent or outcome for plan performance.
- One of the more practically significant findings was that subscription fund terms cannot override rights established in the primary investment management agreement. This directly addresses a practice common in private credit: structuring feeder fund subscription agreements with lock-ups that contradict the exit rights specified in the IMA the plan actually signed.
- The Second Circuit’s jurisdictional ruling means plans with ERISA-based arbitration clauses can confirm or vacate awards in federal court, without needing a separate non-ERISA basis for jurisdiction. This strengthens the enforceability of arbitration as a dispute resolution mechanism in investment management agreements.
Key Practices for Pension Fund Trustees
The NYSNAPP case offers specific guidance that applies directly to how pension trustees structure and monitor external manager relationships:
- Standard investment management agreements often do not explicitly require investment staff to disclose employment discussions with current managers. The NYSNAPP case shows why that gap matters. A simple provision requiring plan personnel to disclose, and recuse themselves from, any manager relationship where an employment discussion has occurred would have prevented this situation entirely.
- Do not assume that a manager’s use of a feeder fund structure is consistent with your exit rights under the IMA. If subscription terms impose lock-ups or withdrawal restrictions, verify that they are either permitted under the IMA or that the IMA is being amended with trustee consent.
- Two of the violations in this case involved fee types the plan had never explicitly approved — including Day One fees and post-termination management fees. Fee provisions in the IMA should define every permissible fee type, the conditions under which each is earned, and what happens to fees when the agreement is terminated.
- When the recommending officer has any personal relationship — professional, financial, or otherwise — with the manager being renewed, an independent review by a sub-committee or external adviser is a basic governance safeguard.
Conclusion
The legal record around White Oak Global Advisors has grown substantially more complex since the NYSNAPP arbitration was first filed in 2018. That case produced a $96 million payment, a nuanced Second Circuit ruling, and clear ERISA precedent on fiduciary conflicts of interest and federal arbitration jurisdiction. The King & Spalding malpractice suit, filed in January 2026 and seeking over $1 billion, opens an entirely different legal front — one where White Oak is the party alleging misconduct by its own former legal counsel. And the $40 million judgment White Oak won against the Clarke defendants in July 2025 confirms the firm remains an active litigant in its own commercial disputes.
For legal researchers, the NYSNAPP line of cases offers a precise roadmap of how ERISA’s prohibited transaction rules apply to private credit managers. For plan trustees and fiduciaries, it is an unusually detailed record of what goes wrong when conflicts of interest go unmanaged — and what the financial and professional consequences look like when they are finally brought to light.