Philips Pension Fund, Guildford, England, entered into a £300 million ($509.4 million) pension buy-in with Prudential U.K., its second buy-in in the past year.
The fund’s first buy-in was with Rothesay Life in August 2013, covering £484 million of liabilities.
The latest buy-in covers 1,800 participants in its U.K. plan, and about 10% of the plan’s total £3 billion to £3.5 billion of liabilities, said Emma Watkins, partner at Lane Clark & Peacock, which advised the plan on the transaction.
The size of the U.K. plan could not be learned by press time. According to data from the National Association of Pension Funds’ 2013/14 yearbook, the closed defined benefit fund has about £2.9 billion in assets.
Philips’ 2013 annual report said that the U.K. DB plan “operates a fixed-income portfolio that aims to fully hedge the interest-rate and inflation-rate sensitivities of the fair value of the plan’s pension liabilities.”
David Jordan, chair of trustees at Philips Pension Fund; Adrian Holmes, pensions manager for Philips; and spokesmen for the firm could not be reached for comment by press time.
