Europe

UK - Scottish Equitable has launched a new flexible personal pension plan aimed at high net worth individuals.

UK - Flexible benefit experts have welcomed a raft of government measures which will help firms reward employees and promote savings.

SPAIN - The IMF has urged the new Spanish government to place pension reform high on its policy agenda.

UK - Simplification Report author Alan Pickering has called for "consensus" among political parties on key areas of pension reform.

UK - Barnett Waddingham partner Ian Ferguson is to retire after 40 years in the industry.

UK - The £550m Clwyd Pension Fund has appointed new managers to run £136m mandates following a major review of its investment management arrangements.

UK - More than three-quarters of occupational stakeholder schemes are empty boxes, government research shows.

UK - Lancashire food processing firm Flowfood has become the first company to be fined for failing to offer staff access to a stakeholder pension scheme.

UK - Workers who lost their pension pots when their firms collapsed will not share in Chancellor Gordon Brown's distribution of £20bn of unclaimed assets.

UK - Executives in final salary schemes with future pensions greater than £25,000 per annum are being urged to switch to money purchase plans.