The DOL’s proposed regulation on selecting investments, including alternative assets, 2026-06178.pdf, identifies six factors that should be considered in the process of selecting any investments for participant-directed plans, such as 401(k) plans and private sector 403(b) plans. The six factors are: Performance, Fees, Liquidity, Valuation, Performance Benchmark, and Complexity. The proposal describes each of those factors and provides 20 examples of their application. In earlier posts, I covered four of the factors—Performance, Fees, Performance Benchmarks and Complexity, and their examples. In my last three articles, Alternative Assets (22), Alternative Assets (23) and Alternative Assets (24), I looked at the Liquidity factor and the first two examples of the application of that factor.  This article looks at the third example: (3) Example. Plan-level liquidity— (i) Facts. Plan terminations, changes in plan recordkeepers or investment providers, and corporate sponsor mergers and acquisitions are examples of circumstances that may impose relatively short-term liquidity demands on a plan’s designated investment alternatives. This is especially true in the case of a designated investment alternative (such as a pooled investment vehicle) with a strategy involving a target position in certain private assets along with public assets (e.g., publicly traded securities). With such designated investment alternatives, a