News In Focus
31 December 2008
Pensions fear for HBOS trustees
The trustees of HBOS pension fund are to meet on Friday to decide whether to go to court to protect payments for HBOS pensioners.
It is understood that there is a deficit of between £3 billion and £5 billion in the pension fund and trustees want assurances that final salary pension holders will continue to receive payments after the bank has been taken over by Lloyds TSB.
The deal has yet to be approved by the High Court so trustees would be able to ask the court to delay the takeover until guarantees about the pension fund have been provided.
The HBOS chairman Lord Dennis Stevenson has promised a personal investigation into the future of the pension fund.
The trustees are also to discuss bringing forward an evaluation of the 80,000 member pension scheme, to decide whether it should be re-valued. The last time it was assessed was in December 2006, when the deficit stood at £95 million, but this sum is expected to have risen substantially since that time.
HBOS said that it thought that merging with Lloyds TSB offered the best protection for its employees – including their pensions.