The Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot. Deficits in the staff retirement funds of the UK’s leading corporates have hit a collective £63 billion this month paul ellis/Getty ImagesBritain’s blue-chip companies handed their shareholders five times more cash than they paid into their own pension schemes last year despite the fund deficits ballooning on the back of falling interest rates. FTSE 100 businesses paid dividends worth £71.8 billion for 2015, sharply higher than the previous year and close to £30 billion more than the collective shortfall in their pension schemes of £42.3 billion, according to Lane Clark & Peacock, the independent actuary. At the same time, the UK’s biggest listed businesses made contributions to their defined-benefit pension schemes of £13.3 billion, less than a fifth of what their…

Source: The Times August 15, 2016 23:03 UTC