Christine Farnish, then chief excecutive of the National Association of Pension Funds, did not mince her words. Final salary schemes, she declared, were toast – «history, frankly» – and all would be closed in five years. But that brutal assessment was delivered in the summer of 2005. Last week, her successor, Joanne Segars, struck a very different note, suggesting that, with a string of caveats, the third of schemes that remain open to new employees might now survive.

Link to FT.com / World / UK – New lease of life for final salary pensions