Deficits

Employer contributions to funded workplace pensions have risen by £16bn in just two years, as employee contributions plummeted by £3.5bn over the same period, figures show.

Unilever is to close its £5.5bn UK final salary scheme to existing members due to the fund's "increasingly unaffordable and unsustainable" costs.

Punch Taverns has made additional contributions of £9m into its Spirit and Pubmaster defined benefit schemes over the past six months.

The Alumasc Group has contributed half of the net proceeds of the sale of its subsidiary Alumasc Dispense to its two defined benefit pension schemes, it announced today.

CANADA - Canadian private pension funds have hit a "tipping point" with more than half converting defined benefit plans to defined contributions for current or future employees, a Towers Watson survey found.

The restructure of the Royal Mail pension plan is essential to address its £8.4bn "huge and volatile" deficit but member protection remains "paramount", the government says.

UK - Pension scheme liabilities ‘held fast' at £1.4trn ($2.2trn) last month as market conditions remained relatively calm, figures from Xafinity Corporate Solutions show.

Pension scheme liabilities ‘held fast' at £1.4trn last month as market conditions remained relatively calm, figures from Xafinity Corporate Solutions show.

Defined benefit pension schemes wiped £93bn off their combined deficits in the last 12 months but the demise of final salary arrangements will not cease, JLT Pension Capital Strategies say.

BT has paid £505m cash into its pension scheme nine months earlier than scheduled under its deficit reduction plan.