Dave certainly is still alive!

Any pension trust director has to adhere to the objectives of the trust (as set out in the deeds and articles of association). These should prevent the interests of the employer being put before the interests of the members (both employees and retirees). They also require conflicted directors to abstain from voting on certain issues. But (and it's a big but) in the case of the IBM trust, because the rules give IBM the power to do things unilaterally and some of those things are certainly not in the interests of members, IBM has the power to influence the decisions the trustees make. Put another way, given the choice between accepting what IBM wants or risking IBM doing something nasty, the trustee has traditionally done the former.

It's worth pointing out that Jim Lamb was a senior IBM executive on the trustee board in 1995-6, when the trustee had no member-elected directors. That board was responsible for the 'dirty trick' of using the C Plan surplus to pay IBM's contributions to the M Plan. And during the period when Brian Marks and I were on the board, Jim (who by then had retired and was an IBM-appointee) and Stephen Wilson (who was IBM UK's Finance Director) were usually very keen on doing what IBM wanted (rather than rock the boat).

In my view there's absolutely no mileage in going to the Ombudsman or Regulator about the composition of the board unless you have strong evidence of irregularities. Reading the Trustee's post about the issue at hand, I see nothing wrong in what they are doing. They have registered that they don't agree with IBM's opinion and that the matter will be properly resolved by the outcome of the court case.