Britain’s largest pension funds have lost almost £100 billion in the past two months alone. Final-salary pension schemes went from having a £12 billion surplus to a £195 billion deficit last year, Pension Protection Fund (PPF) data shows.
The enormous losses threaten to push companies — and their pension funds — under, hitting other firms in the form of higher levies on the PPF, the safety net for final-salary schemes, and pushing them to the brink of collapse. To prevent that, businesses are likely to cut their pension benefits.