Peter Hadasch, one of the founders of Germany’s association of company pension plans, the VFPK, has died aged 64.

In November, Hadasch was scheduled to retire from his positions as head of human resources at Nestlé Germany and supervisory board member at the company’s Pensionskasse.

The trained lawyer had been with Nestlé since 1987, first in the tax department before being named head of the company’s German Pensionskasse 10 years later – a position he held for 14 years.

He was also one of the founding fathers of the VFPK, which was created in 2005. In August 2017 he was re-elected to the board of this body.

Hadasch was among the top experts on the complex German occupational system – and one of the most outspoken.

As a spokesperson for the VFPK lobby group he harshly criticised the quantitative impact study introduced as part of the revised IORP directive in 2013, saying: “We are questioning a mark-to-market evaluation when the market is massively manipulated by politics.”

“We do not need yet another pension vehicle,” Hadasch said at the 2014 aba conference in Cologne, where the first draft of the new industry-wide pension funds was debated.

He was particularly concerned about the end of guarantees severing the ties occupational pensions offered between employer and employee.

Despite his and other experts’ criticism, the new no-guarantee pension model was passed earlier this year in the form of the Betriebsrentenstärkungsgesetz (BRSG).

At this point in time, Hadasch had already been suffering from a severe illness for several months. 

In a statement, the VFPK said: “We have lost a creative pacesetter and highly valued colleague, a knowledgable as well as kind and humorous person who has made significant contributions and who has inspired us.”

For IPE, Hadasch was always a good source and very helpful when it came to understanding and explaining the complexity of the German occupational pension system.

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