DETROIT (AP)—General Motors Co. will change the way it makes pension payments to white-collar retirees, shoring up its finances by offering buyouts and shifting liabilities to an annuity.
The moves will unload $26 billion in pension liabilities from the Detroit automaker's books, and experts say the changes are likely the start of a trend as companies with defined benefit pension plans try to cut risk and administrative costs.
GM said Friday that it will offer 42,000 retirees a lump-sum of cash if they agree to stop taking monthly benefits. For the rest of the 118,000 U.S. salaried retirees and spouses, GM will buy a group annuity that will make monthly payments starting in 2013.
The Prudential Insurance Co. will handle the annuity and pay the benefits. The amounts of the monthly pension payments will not change. GM's current salaried workers also will get the same benefits they would have received before the move.
The moves will cut GM's total U.S. salaried pension obligation from $36 billion to around $10 billion.
GM will look for more ways to cut its pension obligations, said chief financial officer Dan Ammann. He wouldn't say whether similar moves are in the works for the much larger blue-collar pension plan. GM now pays pensions to a whopping 400,000 blue-collar retirees and their spouses.
Its U.S. hourly pension plan has about $71 billion, about $10 billion short of its obligations.
To pay for the annuity for salaried workers, GM will pump about $4 billion in cash into the pension plan and then pay $29 billion to Prudential. The shift benefits GM by eliminating the possibility that the company could have to spend more and more to cover the same pensions.
GM follows crosstown rival Ford Motor Co. in taking steps to unload pension obligations. In April, Ford offered lump-sum buyouts to 90,000 current retirees and former employees. Pension experts say the automakers' actions likely are the start of a major shift in the how companies handle pension plans as they try to cut financial risk and the administrative burden of paying pension benefits.
"Lump-sum offers for retirees and annuity purchases of this magnitude are groundbreaking events in the evolution of risk management strategies," said Carl Hess, global head of investment services for the benefits consulting firm Towers Watson. "Major market shifts are often driven by the actions of the largest corporate plan sponsors."
