March 2024
19Mar

US. AT&T Faces Second Lawsuit Over Pension Plan Risk Transfer

AT&T Inc. was sued for the second time in a week by retirees who say it wrongly shifted responsibility for funding the pensions of 96,000 workers to a “highly risky” insurance company owned by private equity. The latest proposed class action, filed March 15 in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, says AT&T offloaded more than $8 billion worth of pension benefits to subsidiaries of Athene Holding Ltd., which the retirees describe as “a private-equity controlled insurance company...

March 19, 2024
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19Mar

Pension savers warned of ‘national crisis’ as ‘eye-watering’ £50billion at risk of being lost in UK

Over £50 billion of hard-earned pension cash is at risk of being lost in the UK as the number of pensions rises, new research shows. An estimated 4.8 million pension pots are already missing in the UK with nearly one in 10 workers believing they could have lost a pension pot worth more than £10,000. The number of lost pensions are set to rise by 130 per cent by 2050 as more people change jobs, and are automatically enrolled into their...

March 19, 2024
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19Mar

Tutoring the Elderly Is Growing Fast in China

China's rapidly aging population is fueling a promising and fast-growing market for companies providing recreational classes and activities for the elderly middle class, from yoga to African drumming and smartphone photography. The growth potential of the industry contrasts sharply with the decline of the after-school private tutoring sector following a government crackdown in 2021 aimed at boosting record low birth rates by lowering education costs. "Education industries are transitioning to the silver economy," said Qiu Peilin, the Beijing head of Mama...

March 19, 2024
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19Mar

UK. Deliveroo is spending an estimated $230,000 to give a handful of riders 15 hours of childcare—after years of lobbying to avoid paying sick leave, PTO, and pensions

Deliveroo burst into its first profit last year, and the company appears to be shelling out a small fraction of that windfall to its self-employed riders. The delivery app is partnering with Bubble, an on-demand childcare platform that matches parents with babysitters, to give a small portion of its 50,000 U.K.-based riders free childcare. Deliveroo will give 1,000 of its riders 15 hours of childcare to access through Bubble’s app, the pair announced. But the initiative might appear hollow to riders who...

March 19, 2024
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19Mar

US. CalPERS pledges more than $8 billion to alts

CalPERS committed $850 million each to Global Infrastructure Partners V and a co-investment sidecar fund. Pension fund officials committed $512 million to buyout fund CVC Capital Partners IX, $300 million to Asia-Pacific focused buyout fund CVC Capital Partners Asia VI, and $268 million to buyout fund Whitney Global Partners II, all managed by CVC Capital Partners. CalPERS committed an additional $300 million to Thrive Capital Partners VIII Growth, a late- stage venture capital fund. It also committed $300 million each...

March 19, 2024
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15Mar

Japan. World’s largest pension fund to resume foreign stock lending

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) has confirmed it will resume foreign stock lending after it first suspended the practice in December 2019. In the future, the fund intends to “promptly proceed” with specific practical measures such as the selection of foreign stock lending agents by asset management organisations. However, GPIF does not intend to carry out lending of domestic stocks. The fund will resume its activities in foreign stock lending (securities loan management) with a number of foreign stock lending initiatives. GPIF...

March 15, 2024
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15Mar

UK. TPR takes tougher action over value as it issues first fine

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has issued a fine against a corporate trustee in the UK in a drive to ensure savers receive value from their pension schemes. Regulation, which came into force in 2021, require trustees of pension schemes with less than £100m in assets to undertake a more detailed assessment of value for members than larger schemes. Those failing to deliver value must set out a plan to improve or transfer members to a better-value scheme. To ensure this, TPR launched...

March 15, 2024
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15Mar

Japan union group announces biggest wage hikes in 33 years, presaging shift at central bank

Japan's biggest companies agreed to raise wages by 5.28% for 2024, the heftiest pay hikes in 33 years, the country's largest union group said on Friday, reinforcing views that the county's central bank will soon shift away from a decade-long stimulus programme. The much-stronger-than-expected increase comes as the Bank of Japan looks close to ending eight years of negative interest rate policy. BOJ officials have stressed the timing of a pivot would depend on the outcome of this year's annual...

March 15, 2024
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14Mar

US. Around 20% of people have no retirement savings, survey finds

The AARP and the Ad Council launched a campaign called “This is Pretirement” to help encourage people to seriously think about their retirement plans. “The idea of creating a new campaign to give people small, actionable steps, to really get their retirement savings on track but remove that shame and fear, which is all over us when it really comes to retirement savings,” Mary Liz Burns with the AARP said. “You know, we did a financial trends survey, we’ve been doing it since the pandemic,”...

March 14, 2024
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14Mar

UK. DWP’s frozen state pension policy called into question

The International Consortium of British Pensioners has called for a review of frozen pensions as its analysis reportedly calls into question the figures used by the government to defend the policy. According to the report titled ‘Frozen Pensions: A Policy Overdue for Review’, the figures used by the DWP on the cost of unfreezing pensions are based on the "false presumption" that, at the date of such a policy change, all pensions would be uprated to the level they would have...

March 14, 2024
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