|
It is the
season for AGMs of IBM's social Retiree Associations and as in previous years
the Webmaster welcomes reports on them. This report is on the Hursley AGM
and provided by Brian Marks.
The
outline format of these meetings has been the same for many years - somebody
talks for the Lab, the association officials describe the association's year and
finances, and somebody from North Harbour describes how the Trust is going.
(It is very long time since IBM senior management attended, or a
trustee-director spoke for the Trust.)
Andrew
Bainbridge gave the presentation for the Lab. I worked closely with Andrew
long ago and know that as well as being quick to absorb and analyse facts he is
also a good "know your audience" speaker. So this year's talk had less
about how good Hursley's latest projects were and more reminders of the flood of
money still being earned by projects that retirees were familiar with. The
importance of CICS and the messaging products to customers was stressed.
There was even a harking back to the Labs earliest successes, in the mention
that Storage Technology at Hursley was performing well.
The
Retiree Association had a quiet successful year, judged by the absence of
coaches going to the wrong place, etc. Turnover was £44.7K (18% up
on 2004) of which IBM subsidy was £27.2 (3% up).
The
"state of the Trust" presentation differed from previous years because it was
not given by Kevin Waller. Kevin's replacement, Anne Conroy, attended the
meeting but it was David Newman (the Trust Manager) who spoke and answered
questions. David explained that Kevin was not gone from the pensions scene
because he was working with Human Resources (in older terms the IBM UK Personnel
department). David went as far as to speculate that Kevin could return to
the Trust's administration one day as a replacement for David himself.
David
covered a dozen topics ranging from envelopes for payslips to tax simplification
legislation but, as you would expect, the £900M deficit topic led to the most
attendee comment. The £900M corresponds to about a £40K shortfall for each
scheme member associated with it. David explained that the "guarantee"
negotiated was intended to correct the situation over a 10 year recovery period.
There was discussion as to whether this represented a recent more generous
Company attitude (since the £900M deficit arose in a period when the Company was
unilaterally deciding what employer contributions to make) or was the result of
recent legislation requiring trusts to have such recovery plans.
David
noted that the £900M was a "snapshot" of December 2003, and that returns on
investment were 12% in 2004, so that the road to recovery was already embarked
on.
David
mentioned that, amongst other proposals, the Trust directors had suggested
(unsuccessfully) to the Company that increases giving full protection against
inflation should be provided. I had not heard this said publicly before,
although the words in recent communications had led some people to deduce it.
|