UK. Pensions watchdog tells weak companies to stop handing cash to investors
Weak companies have been told they must stop dishing out fat payouts to shareholders if they are struggling to fill a hole in their pension scheme.
The Pensions Regulator (TPR), which has a responsibility to safeguard pensions, said that if an employer is “weak and unable to support the scheme” then it expects the “payment of shareholder distributions to have ceased”.
The disparity between shareholder dividends and pension contributions has been a major area of focus since the high-profile collapses of BHS, which crashed with a £571m pension black hole, and then Carillion last year. Carillion operated 13 final salary pension schemes with around 28,500 members.
“There have been too many cases…
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