Finance firms better than rest at slashing pension deficits to zero
FINANCE firms are sitting on far smaller pension deficits than their peers in other sectors after spending a year right-sizing their schemes, research out today shows.
More than half of FTSE 350 financial firms now hold negligible deficits and most could pay their deficits off with just six days of earnings, pensions specialist Hymans Robertson found in its latest analysis.
In contrast, the total pension deficit of all FTSE 350 companies is £43bn and four firms have unhedged liabilities of more than twice their market capitalisation. The position is still better than at the start of 2010, though, when the total deficit was £142bn.
More than 90 per cent of finance firms have cut their pension deficits to under 10p in the pound of their market capitalisation.