NETHERLANDS - Dutch social affairs minister Piet Hein Donner expects the €51m pension fund of rubber components manufacturer Helvoet to bring forward additional measures against a financial shortfall, despite its being more than 4 percentage points ahead of its recovery plan.

While its mapped out recovery aimed for a coverage of 92.2% at present, its actual funding at June-end was 96.5%, according to the scheme, among the latest to confirm it might need to apply a rights cut.

Meanwhile, the €190m pension fund of Imtech - a service provider for electro-technology and engineering - and the €200m pension fund of towage and salvage firm SMIT Internationale have also confirmed they are on Donner's list.

The Stichting Pensioenfonds Helvoet indicated it had factored in a 4% rights cut in its recovery plan, if funding was unlikely to recover to the required minimum of 105% before the end of 2013.

The scheme of the rubber company has 940 participants in total.

The Imtech pension fund said it had anticipated a 3% rights cut in 2012, if the other steering instruments - a premiums rise, no indexation and a returns increase - were to contribute insufficiently to its recovery.

That said, it noted that its returns in 2010 had only been 3% so far.

The scheme's 96.4% funding at June-end means its recovery is less than 0.4 percentage points short of its mapped out course.

The Stichting Pensioenfonds Imtech has 1,870 active participants in the Netherlands, as well as 770 deferred members and 1,135 pensioners.

However, approximately 5,500 of its Dutch employees are insured with the €35bn metal scheme PMT, which had a coverage ratio of 94% at July-end, but is not facing a rights cut at the moment.

Officials at the Imtech scheme noted its recovery plan has factored in conservative assumptions for returns, and that it had also matched 80% of its pension liabilities with its investment portfolio.
The €200m pension plan of towage and salvage firm SMIT Internationale said its funding ratio was 86.6% at the end of July, albeit without indicating the rights cut it is anticipating in its recovery plan.
That said, dredging company Bos Kalis - the new owner of SMIT Internationale - stressed in a press release that it had no legal obligation to plug the scheme's financial gap.

The SMIT pension fund has more than 2,000 participants, 365 being active members.

Of the 14 pension funds liable to an early rights cut, two have not yet gone public.
 

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