六級閱讀填空習題 Passage 6

The Pensions Regulator has warned employers not to cook up plans to dump their pension schemes. Companies have been warned they may be breaking the law if they transfer their schemes to new employers without meeting their financial obligations.

The Regulator says it has seen a number of plans to do this without making sure the pension scheme is properly funded. Pension scheme trustees（托管人）have been told to make sure employers do not get away with it. The Regulator's Chief Executive Tony Hobman said, “We are starting to see proposed corporate transactions involving schemes where the primary intent behind the transaction is for the employer to abandon the scheme.”

“We do not consider that abandonment of a scheme by its employers is usually likely to be in the best interests of scheme members,” he added.

He told trustees that they should apply an “extremely high level of scrutiny（詳細審查）” if any such plan came their way. What the Regulator is worried about are attempts to transfer a pension scheme to a new, nominal employer which in reality does not have the finances to properly support the pension scheme it is taking on.

If the scheme later runs into trouble the new employer will be in no position to avoid it.

A spokesman for the Regulator said that so far it had seen fewer than five examples of employers who had suggested abandoning their schemes this way. But the fact that such a public warning is being made is a clear indication of the dangers of what might be an emerging trend.

Section 25 of the Pensions Act 1995 says that if an employer capable of meeting financial obligations wishes to stop running a scheme altogether, then it must pay the cost of transferring it, fully funded, to an insurance company to guarantee that accrued（逐漸增加的）pensions can always be paid.

This would always be extremely expensive, even for a scheme with a surplus, because the insurance company would charge a large amount of money, based on the assumption that the pension scheme's assets would be invested largely in bonds, plus a margin for its own profit on top. However, earlier this year the Regulator gave its blessing to a plan apparently similar to the one which it is now warning against. The Regulator has refused to explain exactly why it took this decision.

1. On the issue of transferring schemes to new employers, what is the consequence if the companies fail to meet their financial obligations?

2. By saying “make sure employers do not get away with it”(Line 3, Para. 2), what does the Pensions Regulator imply?

3. According to Tony Hobman, the employers' abandonment of a scheme is often not considered _____.

4. According to the passage, the Regulator worries that the scheme may later run into trouble if the new employer could not _____.

5. If an employer wants to stop running a scheme wholly, it must pay the cost of transferring it to _____ to make sure accrued pensions can always be paid.