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’Aon UK cuts pension payments
The British arm of one of the world’s biggest insurance brokers is cutting its contributions to its workers’ pensions by up to half, the FT reported. Aon said it believed it was the first large company in the UK to cut payments to its workers’ defined contribution schemes,
Pensions body seeks change to payments
Employers will have to pay more into the Pension Protection Fund during good economic times to offset lower payments in a recession, under changes to the scheme set to be looked at by the body that provides the official safety net for pension schemes,
Exploding pensions – Smiths Group edition
A taste of things to come.
From the Smiths Group interim results presentation.
Shares in Smiths Group, an engineering conglomerate, were down 13.2 per cent at 713p in early afternoon trading in London on Wednesday.
QE and exploding pensions
Pensions, accounting and quantitative easing tend to be rather dry subjects.
But, if you put the three together, as Citi has in a research note, you get something quite interesting.
Here’s the basic premise…
Accounting and pensions, when twain meet
Pensions are interesting and topical things, especially the accounting for them.
For instance, we see lots of headlines surrounding pension deficits. In fact, we were told earlier this week that the collective deficit of the 200 largest privately-sponsored pension schemes in the UK soared by a further £16bn in February to end the month at £45bn,
(G)oldmen Sachs
Goldman’s getting old. From today’s FT:
Goldman, which last month said it would cull 10 per cent of its 32,500 workforce, says that as of 2009, it will take longer for Goldman’s employees to qualify for the firm’s full retirement package.
Pensions, prepare!
It’s crunch time for corporate pensions in the US, as companies start implementing the early stages of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 ( PPA) at what is quite feasibly, the worst possible time.
To reprise, trillions have been wiped off the value of pension plans across the world this year as markets plummeted.
The great pensions disaster
George Magnus, senior economic adviser to UBS, is out with a new book – “The Age of Aging: How demographics are changing the global economy and our world.”
Its warning is pretty harsh. The next great financial crisis to hit the world will not be credit cards,
BT looks at raising retirement age
BT is seeking changes to its final salary pension schemes, including raising the retirement age from 60 to 65 and basing benefits on the average, rather than the final salary, earned before retirement.
Pension fund gap hits $100bn
US companies will need to inject more than $100bn into their pension funds to cover market losses, putting them in a cash squeeze at a time when it is difficult to raise money. The cash payment, estimated by several pension industry executives,
Argentine pension funds told to repatriate cash
Argentine pension funds were preparing yesterday to liquidate their assets in Brazil, to comply with a government order to repatriate funds that could enable it to support the peso, which this week fell to five-year lows against the dollar.
US public pension funds face big losses
US public pension funds are facing their worst year of losses in history, exacerbating existing funding shortfalls and putting pressure on state governments to shore them up. In the nine months to the end of September,
Company pensions expected to take big hit
Reuters reports company pensions that started the year off strong now face what could be their largest under-funding ever due to recent steep market losses, according to an analyst report from Standard & Poor’s released yesterday.
Brazil gives go-ahead to aid
Brazil’s government-controlled banks have been given the green light to help prop up financial institutions owed money from companies that have made bad bets on the country’s currency amid growing concerns about the level of exposure.