How a pension deficit could be costing you £200 a year

Workers in companies with defined-benefits pension deficits are paid on average £200 a year less than those in firms without them, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

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A defined benefits pension could be costing you £200 a year
(Image credit: This image is subject to copyright.)

I have written here several times before that pension deficits in the UK must be holding down in the UK. That's partly because the ongoing liability deters capital investment one of the factors that is keeping productivity and hence wages down. But it is also about simple short-term affordability.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.