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Money matters
Jan. 14th, 2006 01:00 pmOK Harrison, I bet you haven't been playing this music choice in the past few weeks!
It always amuses me when people battle against the closure of final salary pension schemes. My employer is the result of millions of mergers/takeovers, and because of this there are myriad schemes within the company. However, since turnover outside editorial is quite high (let's face it, would you stay in sales or marketing for longer than two years?), there are only a few employees in my building on the final salary scheme offered by the now-no-more Lloyd's of London Press (yes, we publish Lloyd's List, the world's oldest daily newspaper).
As they fret that this scheme might be taken away from them, I say that I wouldn't enter a final salary scheme if it was thrown at me. Money purchase schemes, I tell them, are far preferable. Since these people tend to believe what they read in the newspapers (you would think that they would know better) they look at me as if I am mad.
Look, I say, if you are in a final salary scheme you are effectively lending money to your company at a very generous rate. And, if they spunk it all away so that there is none left, you are very near the bottom of the pile (just above shareholders) when it comes to getting any money back. And the government compensation scheme recently introduced merely exacerbates the moral hazard. I, meanwhile, get the money that is placed in my pension scheme parked somewhere else, every month, where the company can't get near it. Now, which would you prefer?
Hmm, they say, when you put it like that...
The only people who might logically argue in defence of final salary schemes are employees in the public sector. But I suspect that even here there may be trouble ahead. What happens if urban councils can't put up their local taxes enough to pay for existing pensions? Already we have local councils doing a fair impersonation of General Motors or Ford in that a large part of their budget is now allocated to people who aren't doing any work any more. It can't go on forever.
Centrally funded civil servants probably have the right to feel safest. Governments, after all, never default, do they?
Tell that to retired teachers and army staff in Russia. The ones selling any old trinkets on street corners, because their pensions are now, basically, worthless, thanks to the clowns running the country when Yeltsin was in power.
++++
And, speaking of sovereign debt, a subject dear to my heart (particularly the misleading phrase "emerging markets", when it isn't clear where they are emerging from or, indeed, where they are emerging to — but "sub-prime" markets doesn't have the same ring, does it?) I see from today's Lex Column in the FT that yields on Italian sovereign debt (Birks opinion, little better than shite, triple B minus) are a mere 20 basis points above that of Germany (Birks opinion, double A plus). The only logical exxplanation for this narrow spread is that investors continue to hold the naive belief that the EU will not allow a member's debt to default. That might have been the case when there were six, nine, or even 12 members, but I don't think it holds true now. There is a tangible, and not minute, chance that Italy will fall apart. There is a definite chance that it will default on its debt within the next 20 years — perhaps not up there with the chance of GM defaulting within the next five years (now happily sitting at above 50% probability), but a significant chance nevertheless. If I were in the markets, I'd be punting on widening spreads between triple A sovereign debt (T-Bonds) and, ahem, "emerging market" debt. Italy's yield will be somewhere between the two.
It always amuses me when people battle against the closure of final salary pension schemes. My employer is the result of millions of mergers/takeovers, and because of this there are myriad schemes within the company. However, since turnover outside editorial is quite high (let's face it, would you stay in sales or marketing for longer than two years?), there are only a few employees in my building on the final salary scheme offered by the now-no-more Lloyd's of London Press (yes, we publish Lloyd's List, the world's oldest daily newspaper).
As they fret that this scheme might be taken away from them, I say that I wouldn't enter a final salary scheme if it was thrown at me. Money purchase schemes, I tell them, are far preferable. Since these people tend to believe what they read in the newspapers (you would think that they would know better) they look at me as if I am mad.
Look, I say, if you are in a final salary scheme you are effectively lending money to your company at a very generous rate. And, if they spunk it all away so that there is none left, you are very near the bottom of the pile (just above shareholders) when it comes to getting any money back. And the government compensation scheme recently introduced merely exacerbates the moral hazard. I, meanwhile, get the money that is placed in my pension scheme parked somewhere else, every month, where the company can't get near it. Now, which would you prefer?
Hmm, they say, when you put it like that...
The only people who might logically argue in defence of final salary schemes are employees in the public sector. But I suspect that even here there may be trouble ahead. What happens if urban councils can't put up their local taxes enough to pay for existing pensions? Already we have local councils doing a fair impersonation of General Motors or Ford in that a large part of their budget is now allocated to people who aren't doing any work any more. It can't go on forever.
Centrally funded civil servants probably have the right to feel safest. Governments, after all, never default, do they?
Tell that to retired teachers and army staff in Russia. The ones selling any old trinkets on street corners, because their pensions are now, basically, worthless, thanks to the clowns running the country when Yeltsin was in power.
++++
And, speaking of sovereign debt, a subject dear to my heart (particularly the misleading phrase "emerging markets", when it isn't clear where they are emerging from or, indeed, where they are emerging to — but "sub-prime" markets doesn't have the same ring, does it?) I see from today's Lex Column in the FT that yields on Italian sovereign debt (Birks opinion, little better than shite, triple B minus) are a mere 20 basis points above that of Germany (Birks opinion, double A plus). The only logical exxplanation for this narrow spread is that investors continue to hold the naive belief that the EU will not allow a member's debt to default. That might have been the case when there were six, nine, or even 12 members, but I don't think it holds true now. There is a tangible, and not minute, chance that Italy will fall apart. There is a definite chance that it will default on its debt within the next 20 years — perhaps not up there with the chance of GM defaulting within the next five years (now happily sitting at above 50% probability), but a significant chance nevertheless. If I were in the markets, I'd be punting on widening spreads between triple A sovereign debt (T-Bonds) and, ahem, "emerging market" debt. Italy's yield will be somewhere between the two.
