Pension Accounting

Pensions were extensively written about during the last market downturn and in today's environment they are hitting the headlines again. This session demystifies pension accounting, and will teach you enough to be able to read through the pensions disclosure in an annual report with confidence. At the end of this session, you will know what to use and what to ignore in the pension information reported in financial statements.

• Funded and unfunded plans
• Defined contribution and defined benefit plans
• How plan assets are calculated and reported in the footnotes
• How plan obligations are calculated and reported in the footnotes
• How the pension expense in calculated and reported
• How the accounting “deals with” IS volatility
• Dealing with actuarial gains and losses (the notorious "smoothing" rules)
• What that does to the reporting of earnings and "debt"
• Looking up the pensions footnote
• How the numbers need to be adjusted in a valuation or credit context
• US GAAP vs. IFRS reporting