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In Decade of Decline there were figures for how a pension loses value in the long term when only 70% of the RPI change is compensated for. In Decade of Decline(2) comparison is made between IBM and other companies. This is relevant because, as this article explains, Management Information Letter 785 dated 18 November 1986, subject IBM Pension Plans, said "As with all compensation and benefit matters, we aim to compete favourably with the practice of other leading companies."That comparison was of IBM relative to named companies covered by annual surveys in the publication "Occupational Pensions". It showed that the general practice was for pensions to retain their value, but with IBM noticeably worse than that. Note also that, in April 2002, the Trust has not come up with the name of a comparable company with a worse PIP practice, as it suggested it might. See here.There is another respected source of information on UK pension erosion, the Watson Wyatt Index of Pension Increases. This covers nearly 60 big companies, although it does not name them. They are probably almost the same set of companies as those that the IBM Trust compares itself against when assessing its investment performance. The Watson Wyatt message is essentially that companies have not eroded pensions - their value has been maintained over the period since 1984. A couple of minor points are worth noting. We do not know if IBM is in the Watson Wyatt Index, but if it is then the Index will slightly underestimate "the practice of other leading companies".The Index excludes companies which guarantee full indexation. Thus it slightly underestimates what the average retiree receives because there have been cases where companies gave a discretionary increase on top of a guaranteed RPI increase. The URL for the Watson Wyatt Index is below but you may have to go to a higher level like http://www.watsonwyatt.com/and get a (free) password to use it. http://www.watsonwyatt.com/europe/pubs/longtermstats/render2.asp?ID=10990
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