27 February 2009
In an article for Professional Pensions Buck Consultants says
that contractual pension terms should be protected.
The issue has come to the fore after the media revealed that
former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin, 50,
is already drawing a pension worth £650,000 a year.
The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, stated:
"You cannot justify these excesses. We've got the lawyers looking
at this, but I do think that on a voluntary basis, actually, Sir
Fred could resolve this problem and he could do it quite
quickly."
However it might not be possible to recover any of the pension
assets as they could be contractually guaranteed, said Buck
Consultants' head of technical services Kevin LeGrand:
"From a general point of view, if he actually earned it through
the terms of his employment contract that gives him the rights to
this level of pension, then it should be protected.
"HM Revenue & Customs would not let you take pensions away
like that. They wouldn't be able to take money away
unilaterally."
He added: "Unless he agreed to waive part of the pension, it
would be a quite difficult legal thing to do."
