Notes on Meeting DuPont 2nd March 2016
Present: Chris Newton, Arnold Dikkers, Pierre Chaigneau, Georges Darrer, Denis Hill
This meeting was requested by the Pensioners Ad-Hoc Group to discuss concerns raised by pensioners about the Dow/DuPont merger and the impact on their pensions and health insurance in the future once the merger and the split into 3 companies was completed.
The ad-hoc group had sent a copy of the letter issued to pensioners in the US to Chris and requested that a similar letter be sent by DISA to all pensioners which could help alleviate fears by specifying that DuPont would honour all its legal obligations regarding the safeguarding of their interests. Chris said this would be given careful consideration. The ad-hoc group asked that this should also cover the European Transfer Pension Guidelines including the RAP process.
The timelines for the series of actions on the merger will start with the 2nd quarter 2016 DuPont AGM when shareholders will be asked to approve the merger. The merger is then expected to take place in the second half of 2016 with a period up to 2 years for the split in the 3 separate companies.
The pension plan will have to sit with one of these companies or with some, as yet unknown, alternative solution.
The 2015 results of the pension fund are not yet finalised but expectations are for a small loss and a coverage above 100%. . Currently there are about 900 pensioners and about 400 employees in the fund. George queried the current Technical Interest Rate of 3% versus the Swiss LPP rate of 1.75%. Chris said for the 2015 accounts the plan was to use 2.5% for measuring pensioner liabilities.
The TPG/RAP review process was moving more slowly than planned as the merger had had some implications on peoples availability to address it.
However, an extra person at 50% had been drafted in to help. Initially they plan to address pensioners in groups per country to resolve national issues at one go versus mixing national implications hoping to speed up the overall review of all approx. 200 pensioners involved. DISA has by far the greater number of these. The minutes of the telephone conference between Denis and the DuPont representatives last November had still not been replied to but a draft was in place and would be issued shortly to address all the issues raised. Two main
points were emphasised in the review which covered the Guaranteed Retirement Income which should include the actual monies received by the pensioner and not a calculated amount to cover Social Security variations. Also the need to have a DISA meeting of impacted pensioners to fully explain the process and the results. Arnold handed out an initial proposal on the Basic TPG concepts which is a good starting point in the process to an updated structural change.
Health Insurance concerns were raised with the goal to keep the pensioners in the GEM scheme. It was not known if Dow in Switzerland was a member of the GEM group. The ad-hoc group suggested a potential solution in the event of any change might be to consider the large group of pensioners in DISA as a separate entity in its own right in the GEM.