These greedy corporations are freezing pensions left and right. This started happening way before Coronavirus. They’re looking for any way to take their employee’s hard earned benefits. It makes sense that AT&T would follow along.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/general-electric-pension-freeze-companies-that-removed-direct-benefit-plans-2019-10-1028584431
AT&T isn't freezing management pensions because they are laying off those people first.
It doesn’t surprise me to hear that a Chief of Staff role to some lousy manager has since been promoted through the ranks. I was with the company for 15 years and I can count at least 6 times where I saw someone who was totally incompetent kids enough a$$ to land a chief of staff job and then get promoted. It has zero to do with talent and intelligence and this is why T is going to continue on a downward trajectory for the foreseeable future.
Side note: anyone who buys the stock for its dividend is a mo–n. The stock price is down 18% during Randall’s tenure of 13 years. Just about any other company in the S&P or NASDAQ would have appreciated many times this in 13 years.
Corporate Greed really has spelled the Demise of the Defined Benefit Pension plan... https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/06/demiseofdbplan.asp
Sad but 100% accurate. I was just reading this article about GE following this same corporate trend.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/10/07/ge-pension-freeze-reasons-defined-benefit-plans-are-dead/3898630002/
This was the Beginning of Randy learning how to work with a Very Sharp Pencil and Guide the Company to the Position its in Today
And had his B**** Jeff attached
In July 2001, he was appointed chief financial officer for SBC, helping the company reduce its net debt from $30 billion to near zero by early 2004. From 2003 to 2004, Stephenson served as chairman of the board of directors for Cingular Wireless. In 2004, he was named chief operating officer of SBC
In 2004 Randall Stephenson was COO
In 2004 Jeff Mcelfresh was Chief of Staff to the COO
AT&T Wireless Group Tracking Stock (NYSE:AWE)
January 17 2005
AT&T Corp. has been accused of securities fraud in connection with the offering of its AT&T Wireless Group tracking stock in April 2000. If you purchased AT&T Wireless stock between April 25, 2000 and August 14, 2000, OR are a member of any of AT&T Corp.'s investment plans or profit sharing retirement plans and purchased or held AT&T or AT&T Wireless stock in one of those Plans during the period April 25, 2000 through August 14, 2000, inclusive, you may have a claim.
The Mobility Tracking Stock was a scheme by Ratty and the other evil doers to invent a special stock used to fund the buying of Mobility some years ago and to dump it into the underfunded pension plan.
I am guessing no insurance company would want to take the existing pension fund from T with all that worthless junk in the plan without T dumping a boat load of cash that T does not have into it first.
@1pwm -what specifically is the Mobility tracking stock in the T pension plan that you reference?
It's TRUE!!! This trend has been going on for too damn long.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/10/07/ge-pension-freeze-reasons-defined-benefit-plans-are-dead/3898630002/
Verizon froze its management pension plan in 2005 and off-loaded its management pension plan (for those already retired) to Prudential Insurance in 2012 . To its credit, AT&T did not follow suit - at least not yet.
One of the complications for T may be that there is a large amount of Mobility tracking stock in the T pension plan. Whatever the reason, I think it's inevitable that the pension plan (at least for management) will be frozen sometime soon. When companies can't grow revenue, they look for ways to cut expenses so that they can continue to keep earnings from declining. Companies inevitably benchmark to the lowest wages and benefits offered by competitors when it comes to what they offer regular employees, but they benchmark to the best competitors' compensation for executives. It's not fair, but it's the way the world works. Those in power make the rules. And the rules benefit those who make them.
The investor class rules!