Deloitte to expand its pensions advisory practiceFurther innovation and £2bln in asset funding partnerships to be announced |
13 January 2011
Deloitte, the business advisory firm, is expanding its pensions advisory capability. The firm has an aggressive growth plan to treble the size of its pensions advisory services practice within four years.
Deloitte will provide clients with services across three broad areas: the funding of pension schemes, benefits strategy for employees and day-to-day pensions operations.
The move is in response to pension challenges becoming increasingly complex and pervasive for many of Deloitte’s public and private sector clients.
The new multi-disciplinary pensions practice will draw on expertise from across the firm including corporate finance, actuarial, tax, treasury, assurance and Drivers Jonas Deloitte property experts. Initially it will consist of over 200 professionals.
Tony Clare, head of Deloitte’s pensions advisory services practice, said: “The challenges our clients face are diverse and range from dynamically reducing pension scheme deficits to ensuring companies’ pensions systems are capable of dealing with legislative changes announced as part of the Government’s reform of UK taxation. We’ve created a cross-firm team with the knowledge and experience to work with companies on solving every aspect of these challenges.
“Deloitte aims to triple the size of our pensions business over the next 3 to 4 years. We are attracting direct approaches from the highest quality people in our competition.”
Deloitte continues to define pensions industry
2010 saw the launch of the Deloitte Pension Funding Partnership (PFP): an innovative way to utilise an organisation’s asset base to finance pension deficit obligations. To date, Deloitte’s PFP has been used to fund over £2 billion of pensions deficit obligations representing more than 75% of the market activity in asset-backed partnership structures. High profile transactions using Deloitte’s PFP in 2010:
| John Levis Partnership | January 2010 | £95m | Property |
| ITV | May 2010 | £124m | Subsidiary |
| Whitbread | May 2010 | £100m | Property |
| Sainsbury's | May 2010 | £600m | Property |
| M&S | May 2010 | £300m | Property |
Deloitte expects to announce a further £2 billion of PFP transactions over the coming months that will involve new ways of unlocking the value of corporate assets to help finance pension commitments. The firm is also in discussion with a number of public sector organisations on the use of PFPs.
Tony Clare said: ““Deloitte PFP transactions have established a new approach to deficit management – one that balances the needs of business to find an affordable and cashflow-efficient way of meeting its pension obligations, with the needs of the pension scheme to improve the security of benefits for its members.
“We welcome the Pensions Regulator’s recent guidance that alternative funding arrangements can improve the support provided to a pension scheme, reduce risk to members and, at the same time, strengthen the covenant of the sponsoring employer. In appropriate circumstances, alternative funding mechanisms can be an effective and more affordable way of funding schemes for an employer.
The development of Deloitte’s PFP follows the firm’s market leading approach to pensions pooling which enables multinationals to improve the management of their global pension plan assets. Deloitte’s approach was used by over 80% of businesses.
Senior hires to Deloitte’s pensions advisory services practice
Deloitte has been actively recruiting senior executives as its pensions advisory capability grows, including PFP expert and former head of corporate finance at Marks and Spencer, Eileen Haughey. Two subsequent appointments were made with PWC partners Richard Slater and Mark McClintock joining Deloitte to boost the pensions advisory services teams in Deloitte’s Edinburgh and Belfast offices, respectively.
Ends
Notes to editors
Further information about Deloitte’s pensions advisory services can be found here: www.deloitte.co.uk/pensionsadvisory.
About Deloitte
In this press release references to Deloitte are references to Deloitte LLP, which is among the country's leading professional services firms.
Deloitte LLP is the United Kingdom member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”), a UK private company limited by guarantee, whose member firms are legally separate and independent entities.
Please see www.deloitte.co.uk/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of DTTL and its member firms.
The information contained in this press release is correct at the time of going to press.
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