The Elephant In The Room: Accounting And Sponsor Risks In Corporate Pension Plans

EDHEC surveyed corporate pension funds, their sponsors, and advisers to assess how sponsors manage pension risk and how pension funds manage sponsor risk. There are 100 respondents to the survey; they manage pension funds assets of more than €730 billion (the assets of sponsoring companies are greater than €5.5 trillion). Sponsors that give their employees pension plans are subject to the risk of having to make additional contributions to make up for shortfalls in pension funds as well as to a more specific accounting risk that arises because of the arbitrary accounting assumptions that differ from those typical of financial economics.