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Dentistry News

Boots Axes Final Salary Pension for 15,000 Workers

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Boots became the latest major British company to say that it will close its final salary pension scheme.

It has begun a three-month consultation with the 15,000 workers in the scheme which will almost certainly end up with them being moved to a defined contribution scheme. These are generally seen as less generous for workers than final salary schemes but also less risky for the companies behind them.

Alliance Boots said that only one in five of its 75,000 British workers was in the final salary scheme, 5,500 are in the existing defined contribution scheme and the vast majority - almost 55,000 - are in no scheme at all.

The company claimed it was not making the move to save money. It said that if everyone joined the defined contribution scheme the cost to the firm could actually be greater. Instead, it said, the new scheme would be more "sustainable" than the final salary scheme.

Chairman Stefano Pessina said: "Having very carefully considered all options, the proposed pensions changes for UK employees is the right step to take.

"This will help protect the business from the effect of pension funding volatility and ensure the long-term sustainability of the group's UK retirement savings schemes. We have seen many large businesses, like ours, make this move and our aim is to encourage greater participation from all UK employees in a competitive and fairer retirement savings scheme."

Boots pension scheme is famous because under its then corporate finance director john Ralfe in 2000 it was not only one of the first to close to new entrants but also the very first to switch all its investments out of shares and into bonds. At the last balance sheet date (last March) it had a surplus of £188 million.

Industry experts said that without Ralfe's farsighted switch the scheme could have had one of the largest deficits in the UK.

The pension fund was also key in the £11 billion takeover of Alliance Boots by US private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts three years ago. The firm backed Pessina's management buy-out of Alliance Boots taking it off the stock market. But the pension fund trustees, led by their chairman John Watson, refused to give their backing to the bid until KKR came up with an extra £418 million over 10 years for the fund and a guarantee of a further £600 million safety net.

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