United Kingdom

UK - Members of the £24.8m Richardsons Fertilisers Pension Scheme will receive just 20% of their pension savings.

UK - Opposition parties dismissed the Bill as a "half-baked waste of time".

UK - Imposing professional qualifications on lay trustees will prompt an exodus of volunteers, Trustee Code of Practice chairman Brian Holden (pictured) warns.

UK - Supermarkets may turn their defined benefit schemes into non-contributory pension plans in a bid to slash National Insurance costs.

UK - The Pensions Protection Fund is further bad news for defined benefit schemes, employee benefit consultant Chase de Vere warns.

UK - Workers who lost pension savings when their firms collapsed brought London traffic to a halt over the Pensions Bill's failure to include compensation for them.

UK - Levels of confidence in long-term saving are beginning to rise, the Association of British Insurers' pensions and savings index shows.

UK - Gartmore Investment Management has opened its 12th single strategy hedge fund - a European directional fund - to institutional investors.

UK - Former Standard & Poor's managing director Peter Jeffreys has launched a new service to help fund managers identify mandate breaches and comply with risk guidelines.

UK - Pensions information and training provider Aires has launched a training CD-ROM covering the PMI's Retirement Provision Certificate course.