UK. Monarch collapse leaves yet another pension fund up in the air
Pensions are the tail wagging the economic dog – sometimes in the strangest ways. Take the high-profile collapse at Monarch Airlines. It’s a sorry story of corporate raiders facing accusations of asset-stripping one of the country’s largest holiday airline businesses and leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab. The once strong, if slightly dated, brand was taken over by private equity financiers to try to make it into another Ryanair.
When that failed, it appears the owners could still walk away with a profit, following a sophisticated offloading of the debts, including the ailing pension fund – once a major creditor to the business. The fund, which is in the state-sponsored Pension Protection Fund (PPF), may have been left short when it first collapsed in 2014.
The Labour MP Frank Field, the indomitable head of the work and pensions select committee, has called for an investigation. His judgment is finely tuned after his battle with Sir Philip Green and the businessman Dominic Chappell, who bought BHS from Green before its collapse.
Read more @The Guardian
