The Economists ‘Buttonwood” gets right to the point. Talking of the problems of funding acquired pension liabilities, he notes:
“There are a couple of weird circularities here. Most of the burden of filling these gaps will fall on the companies themselves, which will depress their profits. That, in turn, will depress share prices, which will make it harder to achieve adequate investment returns. And if asset managers turn en masse to bonds with long maturities to match their assets and liabilities more precisely, which is necessary especially for older plans, that will raise bond prices, depress bond yields and increase the present value of assets they must hold?again, widening the pensions gap. .”
The solution to this conundrum – both in the public and the private pensions sector – is by no means obvious.
The contrary view is succinctly put by Brad DeLong:
Buttonwood’s general principle that it is “ugly” to make companies fulfill their contracts is capable of much wider application than just to the pension issue
Companies offer pensions as an element of a remuneration package and so induce people to work for them in part in exchange for the commitment to pay a pension. The fact that so many companies have mishandled so important a long term obligation provides no argument at all for legitimating an attempt to renege on those debts, and in that respect there is no better reason to give companies licence to walk away from them than there is for any other debt.
Under long established ECJ case law interpreting what was at the time art 119, pensions are deferred pay which therefore carry the same obligations on employers (including, for example, non-discrimination) as immediate payments.
The Economists ?Buttonwood? gets right to the point. Talking of the problems of funding acquired pension liabilities, he notes:
Minor nit: I believe Buttonwood is, famously, a “she”.