Josephine Cumbo

Pyrrho director Anson Chan says Takeover Panel needs ‘more teeth’

USS has ‘materially’ reduced exposure to Israeli stocks and debt following pressure from members

Chancellor to meet big pension bosses in Toronto as part of push to unlock investment from local UK schemes

Financial services veterans call on chancellor to prioritise increasing minimum workplace pension contributions

Pension experts have warned that UK workers are at risk of a “retirement crisis” unless the government acts to raise the amount they pay into workplace schemes, a move that was omitted from Labour’s pensions bill in the King’s Speech. The government’s proposals for pension reforms, put forward on Wednesday, stopped short of requiring companies and employees to lift the minimum amounts they contribute to “auto-enrolment” schemes, which many industry observers have long argued are inadequate. Th…

House purchases and big UK and European transactions were disrupted on Thursday after an outage at the Swift international cross border payments system that lasted for several hours. The Bank of England said a “global payments issue” affecting the central bank’s Chaps service, which is used in the UK for big wholesale transactions as well as retail ones such as house purchases, had delayed “some high value and time sensitive payments”. The BoE later said payments via Chaps had resumed. The Eur…

Sir Keir Starmer has set out legislation designed to enable more than 15mn Britons to earn more on their pensions savings, as the Labour prime minister builds on retirement reforms started under the last Conservative government. Sweeping measures announced in the King’s Speech on Wednesday would seek to boost returns for retirement savers through greater pooling of pension plans, and “value for money” tests to drive out poorer performing funds. Ministers are presenting about half of the 40 bil…

Growing numbers of FTSE-listed companies are looking to unlock pension fund surpluses in an emerging trend that could lead to billions of pounds being returned to employers in the coming years. Defined-benefit plans — which promise guaranteed retirement payouts to members — were once commonplace in the UK private sector but were replaced by riskier defined-contribution plans, deemed less expensive for employers to run. Employers with DB plans have traditionally targeted arrangements where they…

Analysis reveals some schemes pay up to 14 times more for the same product than rivals

Labour insists it will keep lump sum allowance if it wins next week’s general election