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Pension Accounting

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The Mammoth Has Arrived: Pension Plans and the darkness that lies within
The mammoth has arrived. In the last decade pension obligations have become a serious problem that many organizations are struggling with. The mammoth I speak of is the gigantic pension obligations that are billions of dollars underfunded. The wake of a new era has arisen and organizations are faced with the after effects of years of erroneous expectations on returns on plan assets. The problem has become so explicit that organizations are now overwhelmed and are scrambling to rectify the threats it poses. In this paper I will be using the terms “organization” and “firm” interchangeably. This topic is at the forefront of debate and concern for fortune 500 firms. In consideration of the magnitude and reality of the issues I felt compelled to take a deeper look into the topic. Moreover, I will use this opportunity to illustrate the complexity and seriousness of the issue. The task I am about to dive into will require a moderate overview of pension accounting. That is, I will dissect pension accounting from its roots and try to exemplify a story that has a clear beginning, but lacks any real practical ending. As such, in this paper I will cover the following areas in detail to demonstrate the perplexity that aluminates when this is topic is fetched from the dark holes of the financial statements and put into a context that is, too many, preposterous. This paper will clarify the following topics: 1) What is a Defined Benefit Pension Plan (DB)? 2) How has the economy (i.e. volatility) influenced investor and managerial discretions regarding pension related factors? 3) Why ‘financial management’ (Aka. Smoothing) has perpetuated the magnitude of the problem? 4) Why companies like ‘ Air Canada’ are on the verge of bankruptcy? 5)

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