The question of the CAA section of CAAPS was brought up at the briefing yesterday too.
I know they're a separate entity now but their scheme is pretty healthy. They have a surplus and their trustees offered the CAA a pensions holiday this year- they declined.
Their investments are predominantly made in Low Risk Low Yield stocks, bonds, property etc. When it was first mooted that we may have a problem with our fund should our trustees/fund managers not have hedged their bets and commuted some of our funds into similar, safer investments?
On a similar point- the goal of the trustees is to ensure that our assets = liabilities. Given the demise of other final salary schemes whose surpluses had been allowed to be depleted to achieve this equilibrium would it again not have been more prudent to set a goal that maintained at least some surplus to avoid similar pitfalls?
Am I right in thinking that there are NATS Board member(s) who are also Trustees of the scheme? Isn't there a conflict of interests there?