When Maxwell raided the Daily Mirror fund there was outcry and supposedly measures to protect funds put in place. Clearly still loopholes still there.
When I worked for Gallaher Tobacco we had a great non contributory pension fund. Due to it’s fund growing in excess of liabilities the company took pension holidays to reduce the excess. When a crash caused the fund to lose value a plan was agreed to reinvest over a given period to get the fund back in shape. A few £billion if I remember correctly. That was done and the fund is doing what it should. The decision to take the holiday from payments was managed via the Trustees. It was decided not to use the excess money to increase benefits as that could put stress into the scheme if a future downturn reduced the fund making it unable to maintain pension payments. That actually happened so the losses were mitigated but still big. The company didn’t in effect take money from the fund but just stopped paying in to reduce the excess. A saving for them but it came back as needing replacement after a crash. This process was typical of company ethos of employee benefits and also showed itself in profit share and sharesave schemes that employees could use.
A good company to work for.
