Governing Board of the Pension Fund

The Governing Board of the Pension Fund held its 143rd meeting on 11 April 2006. The Chairman of the Governing Board, Professor F. Ferrini, reported on the meetings of the CERN Finance Committee and Council on 15 and 16 March. On the recommendation of the Finance Committee, the CERN Council had approved the amendments to Administrative Circular No. 14 (Protection of the members of the personnel against the financial consequences of illness, accident and disability) and the resulting amendments to the Rules and Regulations of the Pension Fund. The new provisions will enter into force on 1st July 2006.

Professor Ferrini also underlined that the Finance Committee had taken note of a document prepared by the CERN Management regarding the Organization's debt to the Pension Fund. Given that the Organization's debt to the Pension Fund has grown constantly over the last twenty years, and that it represents a burden on the Laboratory's future budgets, the Management wishes to reimburse the debt as rapidly as possible on conditions that are less financially onerous for CERN. The Delegates had entrusted the Management with finding a solution to what they also consider to be a growing and urgent problem, given the debt's impact on CERN's future.

For its part, the Governing Board examined the matter of the debt and unanimously welcomed the Management's efforts to resolve this problem, since the reimbursement of the debt would increase the Fund's liquid assets and allow it to adopt a more dynamic investment policy for that part of its assets. Furthermore, the reimbursement of the debt is consistent with best practice in terms of governance which advocates that provident institutions, for obvious reasons relating to the security of their assets, should avoid having debts from their sponsor.

At the same meeting, the Governing Board also approved the 2005 Annual Report of the Fund and thanked the Administration for the considerable work it had done in order to provide all its readers with as comprehensive a view as possible of the position of the Fund.

The Governing Board also took note of an oral report by the Chairman of the Investment Committee, J.-P. Matheys, on the Fund's asset allocation.

Regarding the Fund's data-handling needs, the Governing Board approved the continued efforts to transfer the Fund's data to the CERN IT Services and to develop standard solutions.