The pension gap of Britain’s top companies widened further in to the red in June, according to the latest research. The FTSE 350 pension scheme deficit was £73 billion, amounting to an increase of £1 billion, the survey by employment and benefits consultancy Mercer revealed. The figures give a funding ratio of assets over liabilities [...]
The Spanish are still in trouble
January 26, 2012
If you are dreading going back to work in the New Year, take heart from the fact that your to do list is not as impossible as the one on the desk of the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy. His predecessor had agreed a deficit target for 2012 of 4.4 per cent of GDP with [...]
Not just an academic issue
February 20, 2011
It has been announced that the pensions of 130,000 academics will change following their reluctant acceptance of the changes that their pension scheme’s trustees have proposed. The university workers’ scheme is a final salary one, although among the proposals which are on the table was the proposition to offer new entrants to the profession a [...]
Final salary deficit gap widens
January 24, 2011
The Pension Protection Fund has announced that the combined deficit of final salary schemes in the UK has expanded to reach £42 billion in May. This compares with a deficit of just £2billion in April. There are nearly 7,400 pension schemes in the group of final salary arrangements that is monitored. This month, nearly 400 [...]
UK pensions deficit
January 20, 2011
It seemed too good to be true. When the Pension Protection Fund announced in March that collectively, its member schemes had a surplus of £0.3 billion, UK savers heaved a sigh of relief and hoped that the trend would continue. However, the PPF have confirmed that the schemes have fallen back into deficit again. At [...]
UK pension deficits
January 4, 2011
Following the progress of UK pension schemes is a bit like being on a rollercoaster ride, blindfolded. One moment you are climbing slowly but steadily, the next you find yourself unexpectedly plummeting towards the ground. Consultancy firm Aon claim that the 200 top defined benefit (final salary) UK pension schemes are collectively £83.5 billion in [...]
Pension crisis meeting at BBC
November 8, 2010
How many angry BBC pension scheme members does it take to force a meeting? Only 100, as it turns out, but there were one thousand more signatures than that on a petition circulated among BBC employees. The members are understandably concerned about the £2 billion deficit in their combined pension pot. 1,100 members have taken [...]
New record set by UK final salary scheme deficit
October 27, 2010
The combined deficit of final salary schemes in the United Kingdom have reached a new high – or a new low, depending on how you look at it. Aon consultancy has reported that the combined value of the schemes’ deficits has reached 1.2 trillion, a figure that is difficult enough to imagine let alone to [...]
Pension watchdog crosses swords with Webb
July 30, 2010
Pension Minister Steve Webb recently announced that private pension schemes could align their indexation provisions with CPI (Consumer Prices Index) rather than RPI (Retail Prices Index). In one fell swoop, the deficits in private salary pension schemes were reduced by this announcement, because the amounts that now need to be found to meet the schemes’ [...]
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