In Reply to: Re: More on member trustees story. posted by P Counsel on 27 July 2004 at 21:56:34:
Brian,
Thanks for the learned update and yes I could imagine that, based on experience in the past 10 years, IBM would find a way around the intentions of such a 50% arrangement or close the fund if IBM thought that they could not manipulate it.
Interestingly if one looks at the C-plan annual report the statement that the fund is under funded appears correct, not just from lower investment returns and reusing C-plan surpluses for the M-plan. The profile of the C-Plan retired to active/deferred members has moved to approx 50% and the majority of the latter will all start drawing on the fund in the next 10 years so simple economics and life expectancy shows that the compnay needs to put in approximately the same as the current C-planners are taking out.
How does the new pensions FSR (is it called?) model assess this, maybe we can use a simple interpretation to assess the fund.
It does beg the question as to whether people retiring in the future should withdraw their fund and get a short term public sector final pension scheme job and put the money in their scheme for the tax payers to guarantee and subsidize.