21 November 2008
The CBI has said that British companies are struggling to cope
with a multi-billion pound pension bill due to the economic crisis.
Richard Lambert, the business group's director general, said the
financial downturn is causing "real problems" in a series of areas,
including cash flow and business confidence.
The stock market crash has wiped billions of pounds off the
value of pension funds, meaning many schemes no longer have enough
money to meet future payments. In such cases, companies have little
option but to pump extra money into the pension scheme.
Mr Lambert said he believed pensions would become a bigger issue
next year as firms struggled with growing deficits, now totalling
around £17billion in private companies and added that
companies were now paying £35 billion a year into pension
funds, five times more than a decade ago.
