Yahoo Finance Tata Steel ‘close to cutting ties with pension scheme’
Tata Steel's UK pension trustees are close to agreeing a deal with regulators over plans to unshackle the company from its £15bn pension scheme which has a massive funding deficit.
The owner of Britain’s largest steelworks at Port Talbot in Wales has been locked in talks with the British Steel Pension Scheme (SBPS) for over a year to agree a deal to protect the business from the multi-billion pound drain.
Sources close to the negotiations say they are now two to three months away from agreeing a path forward which will decouple Tata from the scheme.
Tata will close its final salary pension to accruals on Friday, the same day it is scheduled to begin a valuation which could reveal a deficit of up to £2bn.
Options include transferring the BSPS into a new scheme with lower benefits to ring-fence the company against further liability or dropping the pension into the Government’s pension protection fund. Sources have said the “onerous” levy for joining the latter had made this path less likely.
