The gripping, jaw-dropping rise and fall of Sir Philip Green, the self-styled 'king of the high street'.

Sir Philip Green is no stranger to scandal. He was once hailed one of Britain's best businessmen and had prime ministers and supermodels on speed dial. But his reputation came crashing down when Oliver Shah uncovered the truth behind his doomed BHS deal.

The collapse of British Home Stores left 11,000 employees without jobs and put 20,000 people's pensions at risk. Green eventually paid £363m towards the company's £571m pension deficit, but it wasn't long before he found himself in trouble again. In October 2018, Green was named as the business figure at the heart of Britain's #MeToo scandal. With accusations of sexual and racial harassment flooding the press, and with Topshop's pension deficit rising to almost double the figure that toppled BHS, can the retail tycoon survive yet another scandal?

In Damaged Goods, Oliver Shah, the award-winning journalist who first broke the BHS story, shines a light on Green's past and his uncertain future; this is the extraordinary account of the retail magnate Sir Philip Green's fall from grace.

What do you need to do to retire in comfort? What are the right choices to make before and after you retire? What are the mistakes that you need to avoid? How can you secure a sustainable income for the rest of your life?

This book, co-written by well-known semi-retired journalist Bruce Cameron and respected financial planner Wouter Fourie, answers all these questions and more. It provides straightforward, comprehensive and practical information on the vital issues that impact on retirement, such as taxa tion, investments, healthcare, estate planning and where to live when retired. And it also identifies warning signs to look out for in order to avoid financial troubles.

This fully updated edition is based on the 2023 Budget figures and takes account of changes in legislation, tax and retirement products.

This is the ultimate guide to help you achieve a secure and successful retirement.

Hierdie boek is ‘n praktiese reis om die leser te neem van gegrief en verontrief oor uitdagings soos aftrede, afleggings ander soortgelyke uitdagings, tot ‘n beter verstaan van die leser self, wat sy uitdagings is, en wat daaromtrent gedoen kan word.

Inhoud en tegnieke is verpak in ‘n maklike verteerbare vorm om die leser weer op koers (Ware Noord) te plaas.

This timely and perceptive book addresses the issues surrounding the adequacy of old age income for future pensioners worldwide. It highlights how today's young people are confronted with the simultaneous challenges of increasing employment uncertainty and declining pension generosity - topics which are highly relevant in contemporary welfare states. This pivotal study of the relationship between the current labour market and future pensions explores the ways in which public policies relating to education, employment, and welfare work to sustain a decent living standard during retirement. Using a diverse range of comparative studies across a multitude of countries and nation-specific case studies, chapters consider the influence of institutions and social, cultural, and economic norms on public pensions and retirement saving behaviours in young adults. Providing a valuable insight into contemporary research findings, this innovative book will be essential reading for students and scholars in the areas of welfare states, labour economics, pensions, and the sociology of youth. Policymakers in these fields will also benefit from its analysis of sustainable pension policy development.

When you think about retirement, what comes to mind? Maybe it has something to do with stopping work, but should it? Whatever your plans for retirement are, do you know how to achieve them? Do you know how your pensions, ISAs, property and everything else will come together to deliver the lifestyle you want one day?

In this deeply practical book, 25-year veteran financial planner Pete Matthew walks you through the three phases of retirement:

• The Home Straight – the last five or ten years before retirement, when it’s time to get everything in place and aligned
• The Great Transition – for many of us, retiring is a process not an event and it looks different for each of us
• The New Normal – once we’re settled into our new life, we need to keep everything under review and look towards some later life planning

In this book, you’ll find everything you need to KNOW and everything you need to DO to plan and enjoy your perfect retirement.

Presenting the evolution of supplementary pensions over the past 25 years, this comprehensive book introduces the origin of pensions as a concept and explores the role that international organisations play within the field. It draws comparisons between different welfare states, reflecting upon current research and identifying new directions and ideas. Despite observing significant differences in the approaches to pension design, the book identifies common challenges, including the need to provide for an increasingly aging population, slow economic growth following the 2008 global financial crisis, the need for effective regulation, and increased labour market flexibility. Leading scholars analyse the experiences of a broad range of countries and offer insights into their responses to the numerous challenges faced by national pension systems. The book covers significant moments in pensions history following the World Bank's 1994 report on Averting the Old Age Crisis, and subsequent responses to challenges posed by longevity and economic crises. This book will be an ideal companion for academic researchers and financial law scholars interested in pensions and looking to develop an international perspective on the issue, as well as professionals in the pensions industry who are engaging with other countries and looking to develop their knowledge of overseas pension systems.

In May 2017, Alan Pickering won the award for the `Greatest Single Contribution to Occupational Pensions (1998-2017)' at the Professional Pensions UK Pension Awards. It was a well-received tribute to the role he had played for more than twenty years. The Pickering Report, commissioned by the Blair government, had been a blunt, brutally honest and pragmatic assessment of what needed to be done if Britain's leadership position in occupational pensions was to be maintained. In this biography, Paddy Briggs, who worked closely with the subject, focuses on the world of pensions and Pickering's leading role in it. But the story is broader and more human than the highly technical world of retirement benefits. Pickering is a baby boomer who grew up in modest circumstances in the City of York. As a child, he was diagnosed with a degenerative eyesight disease, and by his twenties he was totally blind. His disability became more of a spur to ambition and accomplishment than a restraint. This included athletic achievements such as running marathons and being a serious participant in competitive race walking. He has reached the highest levels in the world of financial services and also became a well-known racehorse owner and a vice-president of the Racehorse Owners Association.

In response to demographic change many countries in the European Union have reformed their pension systems. During the last two decades personal pensions have been introduced in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the UK. This book is a critical examination of the objectives of personal pensions in these countries and the use of tax incentives to encourage individuals to save for their retirement. It also includes discussion on personal pensions in the United States. The volume focuses on issues such as risk, administrative expense, and the role of tax allowances in encouraging personal pension provision. Based on the evidence from these countries it is concluded that expectations relating to the take up of personal pensions have not been met and that EU countries should not rely on personal pensions to improve income adequacy at the lower end of the income distribution. Academics and researchers teaching and studying employee benefits and pension costs - particularly in countries that have recently reformed their pension systems - will warmly welcome this book. Government bodies involved in pension reform and European Commission institutions concerned with the evolution and problems with pension policy within the EU will also find this book an informative and invaluable read.

Since the early 1990s the countries of the European Union and Central and Eastern Europe have been involved in the process of reforming their retirement income systems. The principal objective of these reforms is to contain the cost of pay-as-you-go public pensions in the face of ageing populations. Many of the reforms involve greater reliance on personal saving and the development of capital markets to fund private pension arrangements. The distinguished contributors from Europe and the United States demonstrate the complexity of pension provision and reform, and highlight the dangers of focusing on one particular model. They consider critical issues and debates about how to finance pensions, present evidence on the effects of pension reform on the incomes of the elderly, set out objectives to ensure intergenerational equity in public pensions, and examine different pathways to pension coverage. They also argue that recent reforms in Europe may have the effect of reducing the incomes of future pensioners while exposing them to uninsurable risks associated with private pensions. This book addresses a pervasive and increasingly important issue by identifying differences in pension systems throughout the EU and Europe as a whole, and proposing various reforms and solutions to the emerging problem of pension provision. It will prove essential reading and a valuable source of reference for academics, economists, policymakers and government agencies concerned with the evolution and reform of pensions, and with social and economic development in general.

In this book a distinguished group of contributors discuss the changing political economy of pension reform. They focus on those countries which have launched a significant reframing of their pension system. Each chapter provides a detailed review of recent pension reforms and offers institutional evidence of the extent to which these reforms suggest a redirection of the welfare state towards a more public-private mix of policies. The countries were selected to represent the variety of new directions which mature industrial countries as well as countries in transition have taken. The book brings to light a number of surprising developments. These include the observation that pension systems do not conform to pure models of welfare system regimes; that a number of diverse developments have contributed to the extension of private pensions; that an emerging pattern of substituting private for public pensions can be detected but public provision still dominates in transition economies and that traditional employer-provided private pension schemes are undergoing significant change. One conclusion is that the design of the pension scheme may be more important than the mix of public-private in preventing the growth of inequality among the aged. This important book will be essential reading for scholars of economics, public policy, political science and finance as well as policymakers and practitioners involved in pension system reform.

In the 1990s many Latin American countries decided upon full or partial pension privatisation, and a similar wave of reforms is currently taking place in Eastern Europe. Privatising Old-Age Security aims to examine what may account for this paradigm change in an area previously considered difficult to reform. Attempting to explore and explain the similarities and differences in pension policy both intra- and inter-regionally, this book analyses the political economy of radical pension reform in using case studies from Argentina, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Peru, Poland and Uruguay. By shedding light on the political viability of market-oriented reforms the book is a valuable and unique contribution to the understanding of the political economy of policy reform. With its unprecedented selection of case studies and application of theoretical insights, this book will appeal to researchers and academics of economics, public finance, social policy administration and transition studies. Moreover, policymakers will be intrigued by the up-to-date analysis of recent pension reforms.

This timely book provides an authoritative analysis of the pension reform process in nine countries, namely Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK and USA, with Japan being covered in the introduction by the editors. The book draws on the work of experts from each of these countries to provide a picture of how the pension systems work in each country. The contributors examine the policy reform process in each country, against the background of the fiscal stresses arising from the ageing populations in OECD countries. They also analyse whether different types of pension delivery systems (e.g. the public-private mix) generate different standards of living. Each study is prepared according to a common template allowing meaningful analysis of pension delivery and outcomes across countries using similar macroeconomic statistics and microdata. Pension Systems and Retirement Incomes across OECD Countries is an extremely valuable and empirically sound book on a highly topical subject. It will appeal to scholars of economics, public policy, political science and finance as well as being of great interest to policymakers and practitioners involved in pension fund management.

This study explores the international aspects of pension reform, private savings and volatile capital markets and clarifies how they relate to one another. It builds the case for the pension-improving benefits of global asset diversification, and analyses the implications of financial reform.

This highly topical book focuses on a particularly interesting area of post-1989 social policy. Existing public pension systems in Central-Eastern Europe underwent fundamental change as Latin-American style pension reforms were adopted. Such radical change in retirement provision defied conventional wisdom among scholars of the political economy of pension reform, suggesting a need for fresh research. This unique study accepts the challenge, focusing on the divergent pension reform experiences of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. This study was granted the EACES Award 2000, a bi-annual prize awarded in the area of comparative economic systems and economics of transition. It has also been awarded the Ed. A. Hewett Prize by the AAASS (American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies).

The sustainability of public pension systems has become an important aspect for governments and institutions worldwide. This book addresses the multiple elements that influence the sustainability of pension systems with a special focus on central and eastern European countries. Supported by the results of econometric empirical studies, the authors discuss and analyse areas like social economy versus capitalist economy, globalization versus glocalization, population aging versus birth and fertility, emigration versus immigration, early retirement versus prolongation versus professional activity, the sustainability of public pension systems versus the adequacy of benefits provided, public pension systems compared to private pension funds and taxation of salary incomes versus subsidization of state social insurance.

Designing pension plans to cover workers and provide the necessary retirement funds for them is one of the critical issues of the turn of the century. Written by four experts in the field of pension funds, this work examines the possibilities for pension reform based on a detailed understanding of a successful system, the union pension fund of the Operating Engineers. This type of plan is managed by workers and management trustees, covering workers that do not have secure and predictable jobs. The authors demonstrate just how this pension fund can provide a useful blueprint for executives, pension fund managers, industrial relations professionals, and public policy decision makers.

By comparing Germany, France, the UK and the USA this study explores how governments have tackled the increased pressure of financing state pensions. Specifically, it looks at the approach of each of these countries to raising the age of entitlement in order to understand the ways in which this policy was introduced in different countries.

This international comparison of pension plans lends great understanding to the transformation taking place in almost every nation around the world. It covers ten of the twelve countries of the European Union, as well as the United States and Japan. The project is interdisciplinary, covering a number of fields, such as economics, law, actuarial science, sociology, and political science, that contribute to the analysis of retirement income systems. The chapters vary in scope - some are comparative, some are restricted to a single country or to one type of plan in one country. Despite their diversity, the chapters share a common awareness of three aspects of pension plans: the importance of actors' roles in shaping each system, the different economic and social domains affected by retirement plans, and the interconnections between social security and supplementary plans.

Providing an overview of the future research challenges for economists and social scientists concerning population ageing, pensions, health and social care in Europe, this book examines how scientific research can provide cutting-edge evidence on income security and well-being of the elderly, and labour markets and older workers.

In the US, retirement savings are low while risk exposure is high, thus dooming many retirees to a low standard of living. This book offers straightforward solutions to build real retirement security for American families.

This book presents a consistent and complete framework for studying the risk management of a pension fund. It gives the reader the opportunity to understand, replicate and widen the analysis. To this aim, the book provides all the tools for computing the optimal asset allocation in a dynamic framework where the financial horizon is stochastic (longevity risk) and the investor's wealth is not self-financed. This tutorial enables the reader to replicate all the results presented. The R codes are provided alongside the presentation of the theoretical framework. The book explains and discusses the problem of hedging longevity risk even in an incomplete market, though strong theoretical results about an incomplete framework are still lacking and the problem is still being discussed in most recent literature.

'The Financial Crisis' has led to a decade of poor returns for pension schemes and lower retirement incomes. Credit-based investment strategies that track the business cycle, are allowing preservation of investors' capital. This book provides analysis and investment strategy plans to generate equity-like-returns with bond like volatility.

This book addresses distributive justice across generations. How should the welfare of the present generation be traded off against the welfare of future generations? Contributions are from distinguished economists who specialize in this area and provide original theories on intergenerational equity, efficiency and rationality, discussing policies on social security, pensions, and environmental degradation, as examples of policies of the present generation which impact upon future generations.

Private and governmental insurance systems in the United States have been suffering an ongoing series of crises. Automobile liability insurance, malpractice protection, health insurance, pension plans, and property insurance have been troubled in recent times by such matters as the threat of insolvency, extremely high premiums, lack of availability for many applicants, and discriminatory selling practices. For over a century, private insurance has been heavily regulated. Governmental insurance, particularly social programs such as Social Security and Medicare, also face serious funding and availability problems. These ongoing problems suggest that regulators have not been doing a very effective job. Unhappy consumers are making different demands both on the industry and on regulators. Some call for deregulation in the belief that market forces will make insurance more efficient, available, and affordable. Others insist that governmental regulators, whether legislators, insurance commissioners, or judges, step in and help solve these problems. Regulators, very much a part of the political process, have avoided these controversial areas of difficult choices. Avoidance is no longer an option for regulators.

McDowell explores what competing types of regulation, whether market, industrial, or governmental, might be used, what goals regulators are committed to, the different regulatory philosophies of federal and state agencies, whether the problems are caused by under-regulation or over-regulation, and difficulties of enforcement. He discusses in detail these regulatory problems in the fields of automobile liability insurance, health insurance, and the demand of other financial service institutions to compete in the insurance business. Throughout the book, he compares what American regulators are doing with the practices in Canada in order to illuminate problems and possible solutions for American regulators to consider. Finally, he closes with an analysis of whether the emerging trends of internationalization and interdependence of personal and economic spheres, the increase in magnitude of risks, and the increased speed of transactions will require changes in insurance regulation. Insurance regulators and professionals in governmental and private insurance as well as scholars and students of insurance law will be interested in this book. Even consumers who are concerned or angry about the future of their insurance protection will find it valuable.