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.

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.

The Pension Crisis concerns the changing demographic profile of the economy: an increasing number of elderly persons supported by fewer young people. Governments around the world are responding to this impending crisis by shifting their pension policies away from pay-as-you-go systems towards individual savings schemes. These savings need to be converted into a pension at retirement, and annuities provide this function. This book is a comprehensive study of annuity markets. The book starts by outlining the context of public policy towards pensions, and explains the different types of annuities available, focusing on the UK which has the largest annuity market in the world. It examines how annuities are priced, and describes the techniques of mortality measurement. As a background, it provides a history of annuities, and the experience of annuity markets in a number of other countries. The book outlines the economic theory behind annuities, and explains how annuities insure consumers against longevity risks. It goes on to describes how annuities markets function: how they work, and whether they are efficient, leading onto a discussion of the annuity puzzle. The book concludes by discussing the regulatory framework, assets available to back annuity liabilities, and recent developments in annuity markets.

The market for retirement financial advice has never been more important and yet more in flux. The long-term shift away from traditional defined benefit pensions toward defined contribution personal accounts requires all of us to be more sophisticated today than ever before. However, the landscape for financial advice is changing all over the world, with new rules and regulations transforming the financial advice profession. This volume explores the market for retirement financial advice, to explain what financial advisors do and how to measure performance and impact. Who are these professionals and what standards must they abide by? How do they make money and what are their incentives? How can one protect clients from bad advice, and what is good advice? Does advice alone effect changes in personal habits? Answering these questions, along with new technology that will decrease the delivery costs of advice, will play a transformative role in helping more households receive the quality financial advice that they need. Accordingly, this volume illuminates the market and regulatory challenges so as to enhance consumer, plan sponsor, and regulator decisions.

Praise For "The Retirement Plan Solution"

"Short, clear, complete, and always interesting. Best book on DC plans and what we should do-now."
--Charles D. Ellis, author, "Winning the Loser's Game"

"At a time when the world is in turmoil, along with retirement expectations, the authors have hit a home run. After reading this book, I have a plan. Read it for your path to retirement security."
--Dallas Salisbury, President and CEO, Employee Benefit Research Institute

""The Retirement Plan Solution" offers a refreshing and provocative perspective on how to assess retirement needs, save to meet these needs, and manage the retirement payout process. In this time of financial turmoil, employees, plan sponsors, and financial advisors will find this highly practical resource volume both useful and humorous."
--Olivia S. Mitchell, Director, Pension Research Council, Wharton School

""The Retirement Plan Solution" is a map to the future of 401(k) retirement plans. But it is not just a theoretical view of what could be. Instead, the authors describe the needs and trends that are already here, and then describe the changes that are developing to meet those needs. It is about the tomorrow that is happening today."
--Fred Reish, Managing Director, Reish Luftman Reicher & Cohen

"The respected authors have created a readable, timely, and very helpful book on all aspects of retirement planning. The suggestions are practical, the information is concise, and the book is highly recommended for anyone that is interested in sound financial planning."
--Moshe A. Milevsky, PhD, Finance Professor, York University, Toronto, Canada

"This is a must-read for people working in the retirement industry, as well as those who simply care about how to improve their chance of reaching a financially secure retirement. In a clear and simple fashion, the authors deliver one of the best books to date on inefficiencies in the current DC plan and potential improvements."
--Peng Chen, President, Ibbotson Associates

The worldwide financial crisis has wrought deep changes in capital and labor markets, old-age retirement systems, and household retirement and consumption patterns. Confidence has been shaken in both the traditional defined benefit and defined contribution plans. Around the world, plan sponsors, fiduciaries, policymakers, and households have gained a new awareness of retirement risk. When pressed to reform post-crisis, many would recommend enhancing financial advice for plan participants, emphasizing flexibility and the positive effect of working another one or two years to make up for investment losses in the downturn. Adding to this is the continuing need for financial education, essential as the retirement system moves increasingly toward personal account pensions. Perhaps most important of all is the need for greater understanding of risk throughout the retirement security system, along with new approaches to re-engineering retirement pensions. This volume explores the lessons to be learnt for retirement planning and long-term financial security in view of the massive shocks to stock markets, labour markets, and pension plans resulting from the financial crisis. It aims to rethink retirement in the new economic era, including the resilience of defined contribution plans and how defined benefit plans reacted to the financial crisis.

A comprehensive guide to all aspects of participation in the retirement programs of TIAA-CREF

Latin American experiments with pension reform began when Chile converted its public pay-as-you-go system to a system of private individual accounts in 1981. In the 1990s, several other countries followed suit, inspired both by Chile's reforms and World Bank recommendations that stressed adopting compulsory government-mandated individual savings accounts. Following the lead of Latin America, individual accounts were subsequently introduced in a number of countries in both Europe and Asia. The World Bank and governments in the region have now begun to seriously re-evaluate these privatisations, with the most dramatic effort to 'reform the reform' coming from Chile, where President Michelle Bachelet backed a comprehensive initiative aimed at making the system more efficient and equitable. This volume is the first to assess pension reforms in this new 'post-privatization' era.
Section 1 of the book begins with a discussion on demographic trends by Nobel laureate Robert W. Fogel and is followed by chapters on system design and their policy implications, including chapters on demographic trends, pension system default options, and an analysis of World Bank's policies and how they have evolved (by three former and current World Bank experts). This section concludes with two chapters with differing views on reform and the role of gender (an important and understudied topic). Section 2 contains in-depth chapters on major reform efforts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay and Argentina.
In addressing the most pressing policy issues and highlighting a broad range of country experiences, this volume provides an unparalleled account of the lessons frompension reform in the Americas.

Pension funds are big business. They are important to employers, employees, governments, and society at large. With the increasing concern over dwindling retirement benefits and the effect on public awareness of recent pension fund crises, managing pension plans has never been more critical--and the pressure on those who are responsible for them has only intensified. Destined to become the classic resource on pension plan management, Managing Pension Plans explains everything you need to know for successful management of any pension plan--from how pension plans help sponsors manage their workforces to the latest in investment and risk management. With concise and practical guidance on ways for achieving optimal finance performance, Managing Pensions Plans is an indispensable resource for pension fund trustees, boards of directors, managers, and administrators of both public and private pension plans as well as for the money management firms, consultants, actuaries, and accountants who serve the pension fund industry. Logue and Rader, two of the world's leading experts on the subject, explain all the financial, legal, economic, accounting, and managerial issues that those who make pension fund decisions must juggle--in language that non-financial managers can understand, yet with sufficient depth to be useful to financial managers as well. The authors synthesize the latest in capital market and financial economics research to help those involved in pension management improve their decision-making in all the critical areas, including: choosing the optimal form of pension plan, formulating and implementing the plan's investment strategy, selecting and monitoring pension plan managers, measuring the plan's performance, and managing financial risk. In addition, the book describes in detail the responsibilities of fiduciaries, revealing how to be both a prudent fiduciary and a capable decision maker. Additionally, Managing Pension Plans offers candid advice on how pension managers can improve fund performance by being more effective shareholders. As pension fund management and performance increasingly affect the success of organizations as a whole, this book will be indispensable to anyone--from fund analysts to board members--who influences pension fund decisions.

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.

Praise for Michael J. Clowes and the money flood

"What a fine book! As an active participant in the revolution in pension investing, I could almost feel the times and tides of the past half-century shifting beneath me. Mike Clowes’s splendid and articulate tour through the era is destined to become a landmark on the bookshelves of everyone interested in this illuminating history of the past, as well as its portents of the future."–John C. Bogle, founder, The Vanguard Group

"The corporate pension fund ranks high among the spectacular financial innovations of the twentieth century. Mike Clowes has built a fascinating story about the impact of this flood of money on the theory and practice of investing, the financial markets, the labor force, corporate management, and the general economy. The far-reaching consequences of these changes make this authoritative and lively book must-reading for everyone."–Peter L. Bernstein, President, Peter L. Bernstein, Inc., author, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

"The definitive history of the rise of pension fund capitalism in America."–Keith Ambachtsheer, President, KPA Advisory, author, Pension Fund Excellence: Creating Value for Shareholders

"Beautifully written, broad in coverage of all the best parts of a great American story, Mike Clowes’s new book gives us an easy-to-read and easy-to-enjoy explanation of who did what and when in the investment revolution of the past half-century."–Charles D. Ellis, Partner, Greenwich Associates, author, The Investor’s Anthology: Original Ideas from the Industry’s Greatest Minds

Surveys show that financial literacy levels are typically low around the world, despite the widening access to financial services and the increasing financial risks borne by households in many countries. This suggests that there will be mounting challenges for households and SMEs to invest wisely and effectively as societies age and governments shift away from defined benefit to defined contribution pension schemes. Individuals will increasingly have to make complex financial decisions to plan for their retirement and for a range of foreseen and unforeseen expenditures. All of these developments suggest that financial education should be part of a lifetime process that starts at an early age and is pursued throughout adulthood.The contributions in this book came from a symposium titled, Promoting Better Lifetime Planning through Financial Education, organized by the Asian Development Bank Institute, the Bank of Japan, the Japan Financial Services Agency, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, held on 22-23 January 2015 in Tokyo.Amongst the topics discussed were: effective pension management, financial education curricula in schools, training for teachers of financial education, internationally comparable data on financial literacy and the evaluation of the effectiveness of financial education programs. There are also case studies on financial inclusion, regulation, and education in Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Viet Nam, Thailand, and Japan.

This book takes stock of major and recent developments in welfare policy in the UK and Germany. Concentrating on trends since the 1990s it compares the similarities and differences between the two countries and analyses the degree to which social attitudes towards welfare provision, fairness, and social justice have changed. It focuses on the policy areas that have been particularly affected in recent years and examines change and possible convergence across three public policy domains: family policy, pensions and policies aimed at social and labour market integration. The book covers both public provision as well as the role of company-based social protection. Based on new empirical survey research as well as focus group interviews, the contributions analyse the ways in which social policies have adapted to common and country-specific challenges, and provide an understanding of the changing welfare landscapes in the UK and Germany.

For more than five decades, Fundamentals of Private Pensions has been the most authoritative text and reference book on retirement plans in the United States. The ninth edition is completely updated and reflects recent developments in retirement plans including the passage of the US Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA), the widespread shift toward hybrid and defined contribution plans, and a burgeoning economics and finance research literature on retirement and retirement plans. The volume is organized into eight main sections so the reader may use the volume as a text, a research tool, or a general reference.
Section I (Chapter 1) introduces the historical evolution of the pension movement and the underlying forces that shaped its progress. Section II (Chapters 2 and 3) explains how employer-provided pensions fit into the patchwork of the U.S. retirement income security system, especially Social Security. The section also includes a discussion of the economics of tax incentives and their effect on retirement plan offerings and the structure of the benefits provided. Section III (Chapters 4 through 9) lays out the economic role of retirement plans--their design, workforce incentives, plan finances, production of adequate retirement income, possibilities for phased retirement, and the risk of outliving pension assets. Section IV (Chapters 10 through 13) examines the various forms of defined benefit and defined contribution plans, including hybrid plans, in terms of their structure, requirements, and operations. Section V (Chapters 14 through 20) lays out the regulatory environment in which plans operate; this extensive material has been especially updated to reflect PPA, and the reams of associated guidance and implementing regulations. Section VI (Chapters 21 through 25) explores the funding and accounting rules under which private defined benefit plans operate; this section also reflects the new PPA rules. The penultimate section (Chapters 26 through 28) includes a complete revamping of chapters on risk management and investments applicable to retirement plans. The section describes modern portfolio theory and its broad implications for retirement investing, and in two separate chapters, specific implications for defined benefit and defined contribution plans. The final section (Chapter 29) concludes the text with a discussion of the future of retirement plans in the United States and around the world--a particularly timely subject in light of the extreme financial volatility experienced in 2008 and the pending retirement of the baby boom generation.

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.

The Handbook of West European Pension Politics provides scholars, policy-makers and students with a complete overview of the political and policy issues involved in pension policy, and well as case studies of contemporary pension politics (1980 to present) in 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The book is suitable as a text for courses in comparative politics, European Studies, social policy, comparative public policy and public administration. Each chapter is written by an expert on pension politics and is presented in a standardized format with standardized tables and figures that describe: political institutions; government coalitions, parliamentary and electoral majorities; the party system; the pension system; proposed and enacted pension reforms.

'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.

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.

This book studies the normative and positive ramifications of public pension policies in a growing economy. It analyzes the impact of an unfunded public pension scheme on aggregate productivity growth and efficiency, it considers the political forces behind public pension legislation, and it develops and discusses elements of public pension design and reform. The book emphasizes the endogenous growth paradigm for an understanding of the dynamic impact of intergenerational transfers inherent in an unfunded public pension scheme. It uncovers an allocative role of intergenerational transfers which is exclusively linked to the possibility of endogenously evolving economic growth. The endogenous growth approach also allows to identify unfunded public pensions as a source of a conflict between current and future generations. This conflict shapes private old-age security considerations as well as the process of public pension legislation.

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.