A long grey cloud of Pension deficits

The human resources services firm says pension deficits have remained largely stagnant over the past 18 months, and companies and trustees need to own up to such stark realities in order to formulate ways of tackling them. Hewitt believes the aggregate pension deficit for the FTSE100 companies has only marginally increased since the start of last year and, at the halfway point of 2005, despite a recent upswing in equity markets, the deficit remains at around £50-60bn, measured against the company accounting standard FRS17. Raj Mody, pensions consultant at Hewitt Associates, says: "Inve...