Budweiser Is Brewing A Pension Change
Looks like Bud prices are going up and their pensions are going down.
The program, which Anheuser-Busch calls "Blue Ocean", includes cutting 10 to 15 percent of its 8,600 salaried workforce through early retirement and attrition, speeding up price hikes to cope with rising commodity costs, and setting earnings forecasts that exceed Wall Street's expectations.
It details plans to calculate lump sum pension benefits for salaried employees through a method using interest rates tied to corporate bonds as of 2009. It previously calculated the rate using the 30-year US Treasury bond rates for the months of August and September. This is expected to reduce individual lump sum payouts by about 5 percent to 6 percent in 2009 and about 15 percent by 2012, the memo said. Courtesy of Forbes.com
Wise Owl