Re: Trustees Accountability

Posted by Bryan Balfour on 24 September 2000 at 09:30:27:

In Reply to: Re: Trustees Accountability posted by Pete Warren on 21 September 2000 at 07:48:41:

: The fund IS considered to belong to the members. The trustees
: are just what the name implies, the money is held in trust and
: looked after by the trustees who are under a duty to care for
: the money on behalf of the members.
I suspect it's not that simple in law. I'd love to be proved wrong on this but my understanding is that the fund is the major asset of IBM UK Pension Trust Ltd and under law is 'owned' by the shareholders of that company. This asset, however is ring-fenced by some rules dictating how these shareholders, through the administrators of this company, may administer this asset(presumably laid out in the Articles of Association for the company). The Trustees are not the administrators of this asset. Their role is to ensure that the administrators adhere 100% to the rules controlling this asset.

It bothers me somewhat when I read some of the messages here accusing the trustees of 'abusing their role' and the company of 'raiding' or 'robbing' the fund when there is no evidence whatsoever that this has happened. As far as I am aware no money has been taken out of the fund. Instead two things have happened, namely IBM has been taking a contributions holiday and some surplus from the C plan has been transferred to the M plan.
Under the 'rules' as they stand now I'm sure both the company and the administrators of the fund are acting lawfully.

I believe that we as an organisation (hopefully) should direct our energies at persuading the government, 'now that legislation governing how new private pension plans must be administered is in place, they now need to focus their attention on bring in line the rules governing the administration of old pension plans, with particular emphasis on the distribution of any surpluses in these plans'.

My case rests, M'lud.