The Dutch closed pension fund of the former office supplies company Staples has concluded a buyout deal with Aegon, a subsidiary of insurer ASR.
The Staples pension fund – which has around 7,400 members – will receive a full, guaranteed indexation based on inflation in the euro area. There will also be a one-off pension increase of around 1.8%.
Since 2015, new Staples employees have stopped accruing pensions with the €660m fund. In 2018, existing employees also started accruing pensions in a defined contribution (DC) arrangement with a third party.
The possibility to offer a one-off pension increase of 1.8% on top of guaranteed indexation allows the fund “to communicate the decisions to our participants with a good feeling,” said the fund’s president Rico Donders.
He added that the three final offers the fund got from Aegon, Athora and Nationale Nederlanden were so close to each other that “minor points” became the deciding factor on the deal.
Staples’ pension assets will move to Aegon in the third quarter of the year, after which the fund will wind up.
For Aegon/ASR, this is the fourth buyout in recent months, following previous deals with the pension funds of Coram, Dentists and Dental Specialists and British American Tobacco.
This article was first published on Pensioen Pro, IPE’s Dutch sister publication. It was translated and adapted for IPE by Tjibbe Hoekstra
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