UK - Radius Systems Pension Scheme trustees have transferred the fund's liabilities to Rothesay Life, a UK insurer owned by Goldman Sachs, in a deal worth nearly £100m (€112.5m).
The buyout follows the scheme's acquisition last year of a pension buy-in. That purchase allowed the trustees to hold the buy-in indefinitely, turn it into a buyout and wind up the scheme, or transfer the pension obligations.
The scheme chose a third option because it allowed the scheme to wind up quickly - seven months from the buy-in.
Mercer principal Harry Harper, who advised the trustees, said the arrangement had "cut short what would otherwise have been a much longer wind-up process".
Trustee board chair Robin Freeman said the deal provided immediate certainty of benefits and allowed the scheme to be prescriptive about future discretionary pension increases.
In other news, most UK businesses have no plan in place to deal with the impact of compulsory employer pension contributions.
A survey of 300 businesses by BBS, a consultancy, found that 87% had yet to agree a policy on the new legislation.
Director James Stanfield said: "This figure is far worse than we'd feared."
The company described the new legislation as "a blind spot in the affairs of many organisations".
More than 60% of the businesses surveyed had also failed to adjust executive remuneration after changes to pension tax relief.
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