Wednesday 27 October 2010

This is so much fun on so many levels.....

An extract from the FT article (which should be read as it does for Will Hutton's credibility)

"The Work Foundation’s pension woes mirror the difficulties currently being experienced by many businesses. Uniq, the food maker formerly known as Unigate, this week proposed a radical “deficit for equity” swap to resolve a towering pension deficit."

(clicking on the headline will take you to the FT site - but you might need to register - this is the link
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/396bf3aa-ddcb-11df-8354-00144feabdc0.html )

Update: Or you can try Googling - Work Foundation bought out of insolvency
(Thanks to a dearieme)

Lola

4 comments:

dearieme said...

If you tell your reader the actual FT headline, then they can google it and that way get in for free.

Mark Wadsworth said...

1. The Work Foundation is of course a fakecharity, primarily there to pay Mr W Hutton a six figure salary (plus pension no doubt).

2. As to Uniq, this is how things should be, GM and Chrysler did it, I have been proposing it as a solution to pension fund deficits for years*, what we end up with are worker-owned-businesses. This might be A Good Thing or A Bad Thing, only time till tell.

* Only to get round the 5% rule and spread investment risk, all companies with deficits would have to issue shares or bonds to other businesses' pension funds. The mechanics are a bit faffy but the numbers stack up.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, having now read the FT article, all I can say is HOLY SHIT!

The WF is not a business in the normal sense of the word, it was a fakecharity, so it has nothing to sell! And the university is largely state funded as well, so what right to they have to spend out money on bailing out shits like Will Hutton?

So this is an even more extreme example of public sector people helping themselves to the goodies on the way out as the car parks one you posted yesterday.

Bayard said...

"The Work Foundation is of course a fakecharity, primarily there to pay Mr W Hutton a six figure salary (plus pension no doubt)."

Plus it gives him a platform to which to pontificate. I am sure this is the raison d'etre of most fakecharities. My favourite is CASH, for its honest acronym. I do rather regret not founding one when the going was good.