The biggest buy-out of a British pension fund occurred this week with the £1.5 billion ($2.2 billion) transfer of EMI's scheme to Pension Insurance Corporation. Citigroup became the music company's pension-fund sponsor in 2011 when it seized EMI from Terra Firma, a private-equity group whose takeover of the label it had backed, emi's operating businesses have already been sold; now the bank has got rid of the fund. Under a buy-out, an insurer is paid to take on the burden of paying the final-salary (or defined-benefit) pensions of current and future retirees, absolving the sponsoring company of all its obligations. British companies have been getting rid of their pension schemes for several years but the trend has also spread to America. Both General Motors and Verizon offloaded part of their schemes last year.
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