I had this exception when moving from Spring MVC 3 to SPring MVC 4, and trying to use @RestController. Here is the complete stacktrace,

 java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No converter found for return value of type: class java.util.ArrayList
	at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.AbstractMessageConverterMethodProcessor.writeWithMessageConverters(AbstractMessageConverterMethodProcessor.java:158)
	at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.AbstractMessageConverterMethodProcessor.writeWithMessageConverters(AbstractMessageConverterMethodProcessor.java:133)
	at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor.handleReturnValue(RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor.java:165)
	at org.springframework.web.method.support.HandlerMethodReturnValueHandlerComposite.handleReturnValue(HandlerMethodReturnValueHandlerComposite.java:80)
	at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.ServletInvocableHandlerMethod.invokeAndHandle(ServletInvocableHandlerMethod.java:126)
	at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.invokeHandlerMethod(RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.java:806)
	at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.handleInternal(RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.java:729)
	at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.AbstractHandlerMethodAdapter.handle(AbstractHandlerMethodAdapter.java:85)
	at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:959)

The solution is actually quite simple, just adding some library on pom.xml seems solve this probem,

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
            <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
            <version>2.8.1</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
            <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
            <version>2.8.1</version>
        </dependency>