Motley Fool
Retirement's Second Leg: Pensions
Thursday July 8, 11:11 am ET
By Robert Brokamp
Want some more bad news about pensions? According to "The Corporate Funding Survey on Pensions," by Wilshire Research, of the 331 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 that offer defined-benefit plans, just 19% had pension assets that met or exceeded liabilities. That's an improvement over the 11% figure from 2002, as pension assets grew along with the stock market in 2003. But that still leaves the employees of such companies as Ford (NYSE: F - News), IBM (NYSE: IBM - News), and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT - News) a little nervous -- not to mention the poor souls who work for United's UAL (OTC BB: UALAQ.OB - News), which is no longer in the S&P 500 for good reason.