Welcome New Subscribers

In the past few weeks I have had a number of new subscribers. I wanted to say thank you for coming on board and please feel free to comment. If I do all the posts, and all the writing I will always agree with myself. If I need to start having multiple personalities and arguments with myself in order to get differing view points...............I won't go there, yet. I am not going to have as much time to write as I would like as I am on the Executive branch negotiations team. There will be a number of topics I can not write about, but nothing stops the reader from sharing their opinions on anything.

Pension Funding

Will this be the next bailout?

Exxon Mobil after posting successive record setting profits and receiving Billions in tax breaks has the most underfunded plan of any company in the S&P 500.

Respect for employees? I don’t think so. Big Oil Has A Hole in Pension Funding

While Republicans are still trying to say the free market will solve everything and prosperity will be trickled down, the employees are in the bottom story of the two story outhouse.

While very few corporate pension funds have weathered the economic problems and State Employee and teachers pension funds have been hard hit, plans at energy companies are in the worst shape..

According to an analysis of S&P 500 companies from Citi Investment Research, companies in the energy sector had pension funds that were only slightly more than 80 percent funded at the beginning of 2008, the lowest funding level among any of the 10 industries examined by Citi.

With the drop in the market and the drops in oil prices by the end of October, Citi calculates that funding levels have dropped off another 20 percent, at least, leaving energy company pension funds barely above 60% funded.

“This could result in a need for energy firms to meaningfully contribute to their plans in 2009,” wrote Citi analyst Tobias Levkovich in a report released Thursday, November 6.

Why does it sound like this analyst thinks it is bad that these companies will have to fund their pension funds? Is it because the obscene profits have not been enough and the companies have been short changing their employees to benefit their investors?

“This would come at a time when earnings revisions for energy companies already are sliding sharply alongside plummeting oil prices … and could add another headwind for energy earnings and stock prices.”

The report noted that a substantial chunk of the funding shortfall in the energy industry belonged to just a handful of companies. That included Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, which have been reporting huge profits but still had three of the 10 most underfunded pension plans in the S&P 500 at the beginning of this year.

Indeed, Exxon Mobil had the most underfunded plan of any company in the S&P 500. Exxon Mobil has $27.8 billion in pension plan assets to cover $34.5 billion in pension liabilities, for a $6.7 billion deficit. ConocoPhillips, with a $1.6 billion shortfall, had the fifth-most underfunded plan, while Chevron’s $1.2 billion pension deficit was the eighth-largest of any company in the S&P 500.

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