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Carillion Tried To 'wriggle Out' Of Pension Contributions

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mikey4444 | 08:18 Mon 29th Jan 2018 | News
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42853895

So its exactly how we suspected.....highly paid bosses at the trough, and the shareholders being rewarded from funds that weren't going into the Pension Fund.
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Somehow I'm unsurprised. Companies seem to use staff as a resource rather than a responsibility, and if it has issues staff are considered a liability to be put to one side.
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OG...its sleaze, at its worst.

Regulations need to be tightened up considerably, to make sure this doesn't happen again.

In the papers at the weekend, there was a worrying report on my own pension fund, British Telecom, which is deficit to the tune of £14bn ! Despite making money hand over fist for many years, its now in dire difficulties.

Having been with BT a few years, a small part of my pension is with them. I note it went down a few pence in January when one might have expected an inflation driven increase. Due to it being a small percentage of my present income I've not got around to querying it, but it seems suspicious to me. Pensions should be ring fenced, adequately funded, and companies banned from contribution breaks. Citizens rely on the agreed contract being fulfilled.
Personally I will wait until the FRC has investigated the audits of the accounts rather than rely on what MP's say.
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OG....absolutely agree. There are many thousands of existing pensioners who rely on their regular monthly payments. For me, it will count as 50% of my net income this summer.
For some reason I thought that after the Maxwell scandal pensions were goign to be ring fenced. Apparently not so I agree OG they should be under a third party fund manager where the company has no access to the fund other than to pay into it.
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YMB....I agree but I wonder why this hasn't happened ?
A question for our relative MP's I think !
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Carillion did what they did because they could...its as simple as that.

There are firms struggling at the moment, that despite that, they are still paying senior staff and shareholders huge sums of money, thus increasing the pension fund deficit.

This isn't a Party-political fight. But as long bis business continues to be able to lobby Parliament in the way that they do, there is begger-all chance that things will change, especially now the the Pension Protection Fund is alive and kicking.

The difficulty with the PPF is that it is backed up by the tax payer, not industry.
//In the papers at the weekend, there was a worrying report on my own pension fund, British Telecom, which is deficit to the tune of £14bn ! Despite making money hand over fist for many years, its now in dire difficulties. //

whilst some of that can be ascribed to mis-management, the most prominent reason for shortfalls (carillion aside) in pension schemes must be laid squarely at the feet of a LABOUR chancellor.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10798785/True-cost-of-Labours-pension-tax-raid-and-others-since-Seventies.html
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Mush...with respect...rowlocks.

That action by Brown is only one of the reasons why the BT pension fund, and others are in deficit. There are a number of other factors involved, such as ::

1 Longer life expectancy
2 Contribution "holidays" on behalf of Companies.
3 Much lower investment returns than was at first supposed.
4 Tougher trading conditions for Companies
5 Companies going bust "like Carillion"

The point of my thread today, is despite Carillion going slowly down the pan, the Company still managed to find ooddles of money to spend on its management, and the shareholders greed for profits, despite the company being in difficulty.

Those two things were given higher priority than looking after its present and future pensioners....just like in the case of BHS.
-- answer removed --
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Spathy....wrong thread perhaps ?
// Pensions should be ring fenced, adequately funded, and companies banned from contribution breaks.//

actually I thought they were - it is twenty years since Maxwell - - - - He used the pension fund to invest in his firm that is he bought Maxwell shares wiv Pension money and that kept the price artificially high.

Havent they had three or four tries at a pension act ?

if no one HAD to contribute to a pension fund - then no employer would have one ....
Mushie wear your badge of wrongness with Pride !
you are of course - - - - right

tot up the pension deficits - x billion quid
tot up the tax mr Broon took out of the pension funds
and yup it is not unadjacent to . . . . x billion quid
ergo

no one had mentioned the effect of valuation
The idea is that one the valuation date - all the contributions cease and all the pensions mature and start paying - then you do an asset liability calculation

the difficulty is that this is never a realistic scenario

gthanks for a bit of needed good sense Mush
//and the Pension protection fund is funded by the tax payer//

o god I love AB - I live for the aphorisms, one liners and pithy wisdom

"The PPF has several sources of income. These include: an annual Pension Protection Levy paid by eligible pension schemes. recoveries of money, and other assets, from insolvent employers of schemes that we take on (see our booklet Restructuring and Insolvency - The PPF Approach)"

yup so the pension protection fund is totally funded by the tax payer except for the bits where it isnt

avanti AB !
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Peter....when the PPF runs out of money, which it may do soon, if any more pension funds get into difficulty, the tax payer will have to step in and bail the scheme out.

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