Present: Chris Newton, Arnold Dickers, Pierre Chaigneau, Georges Darrer, Denis Hill
Fund performance 2017: Chris reviewed the performance which showed a return of around 10+% mainly due to the performance of equities and a coverage of between 105.8%. There was a reduction of the TIR from 2.25 to 2.
Chris announced that there would be a change in the use of mortality rates to estimating liabilities and it would be based on generational data. The cost estimate could be 20MMCHF per year for 3 years. The goal for any pension increase is 118% cover.
There would be information on our association in the transmittal of the Pension Annual Report contained in the cover letter.
Merger Update: By end Q1/19 there will be a new Dow called Dow, end Q2/19 the restructured Ag. Then what’s left will be DuPont (now specialties) around July 2019.
The current expectation is that our Pension Fund will stay with DuPont.
Geneva should remain the administration centre but the exact location is not yet known.
There will be about 15000 employees transferred from Dow to DuPont but the Swiss number will remain essentially the same.
TPG/RAP: Arnold reported that there had been contact with most impacted retirees but that were some difficulties in contacting widows/widowers, but work was ongoing.
He was reminded that he hadn’t replied to Denis’s 11th March 2018 letter and he promised to do so.
DuPont/Pensioners Biannual get-together: In view of the merger timetable it was proposed that the April/May 2019 timeframe would be a good time as all the plans should be finalised by then.