Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: I "doloris costi" del capitale

Dal WSJ di oggi:
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AS WORKERS' PENSIONS WITHER, THOSE FOR EXECUTIVES FLOURISH
Companies Run Up Big IOUs, Mostly Obscured, to Grant Bosses a Lucrative
Benefit
The Billion-Dollar Liability
By Ellen E. Schultz and Theo Francis
To help explain its deep slump, General Motors Corp. often cites
"legacy costs," including pensions for its giant US work force.  In its
latest annual report, GM wrote:  "Our extensive pension and
[post-employment] obligations to retirees are a competitive
disadvantage for us."  Early this year, GM announced it was ending
pensions for 42,000 workers.
But there's a twist to the auto maker's expensive situation:  The
pension plans for its rank-and-file US workers are overstuffed with
cash, containing about $9 billion more than is needed to meet their
obligations for years to come.
Another of GM's pension programs, however, saddles the company with a
liability of $1.4 billion.  These pensions are for its executives.
This is the pension squeeze companies aren't talking about:  Even as
many reduce, freeze or eliminate pensions for workers---complaining of
the costs---their executives are building up ever-bigger pensions,
causing the companies' financial obligations for them to balloon.
Companies disclose little about any of this.  But a Wall Street Journal
analysis of corporate filings reveals that executives' benefits are
playing a large and hidden role in the declining health of America's
pensions.  Among the findings:
*Boosted by surging pay and rich formulas, executive pension
obligations exceed $1 billion at some companies.  Besides GM, they
include General Electric Co.(a $3.5 billion liability):  AT&T Inc.
($1.8 billion):  Exxon Mobile Corp. and International Business Machines
Corp. (about $1.3 billion each)....
*These liabilities are largely hidden, because companies don't
distinguish them from overall pension obligations in their federal
financial filings.
*As a result, the savings that companies make by curtailing pensions
for regular retirees---which have totaled billions of dollars in recent
years---can mask a rising cost of benefits for executives.
*Executive pensions, even when they won't be paid till years from now,
drag down earnings today.  And they do so in a way that's
disproportionate to their size, because they aren't funded with
dedicated assets.
One reason executive pensions have grown so large is that they are
linked to ballooning overall executive compensation. Companies often
design retirement payouts to replace a percentage of what a person
earns while active.
But for executives, the percentage of pay replaced is itself higher.
Compensation committees often aim for a pension that replaces 60% to
100% of a top executive's compensation.  It's 20% to 35% for
lower-level employees.
David Dorman was chief executive of AT&T from 2002 until its merger
with SBC Communications in November.  He left in January.  His total of
five years at AT&T earned him a yearly pension of $2.1 million.  That
will replace 60% of his annual salary.
By contrast, former AT&T accountant Ralph Colotti's $28,000 annual
pension replaces 33% of his final pay.  He was at the company for 33
years.
Mr. Colotti's pension was held down by a change AT&T made in 1998 in
the formula used to calculate pensions.  The switch had the effect of
freezing pension growth for older workers like him.  The 55-year old
now works at another company with a pension plan.  "Working here
another 10 years won't make up for what my old pension would have
been," without AT&T's change in formula, he said.
AT&T described its retirement benefits as excellent and said a pension
on the scale of Mr. Colotti's is good in the telecommunications
industry.  Mr. Dorman's richer deal is "reasonable, customary and
comparable to what similarly-sized companies offer," AT&T said....
By curtailing pensions for regular workers, large companies have
reduced pension obligations to them by billions of dollars in recent
years.  So pension obligations to regular workers are stable or
shrinking at many companies while those for executives rise.  At.
BellSouht Corp. for example, the obligations for pensions for ordinary
workers have edged down 3% since 2000.  The liability for pensions for
executives is up 89% over the same period....

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