Sears’ CFO Blogs on Pension Plan

SEARS’ CFO BLOGS ON PENSION PLAN: Sears Holdings Corp.’s chief financial officer Rob Schriesheim is back to blogging again. On Sunday he blogged about the company’s pension plan, taking issue over an article last week about how the plan returned just 1.5 percent. In his blog, Schriesheim noted that Sears has taken a much more conservative approach than many other pension plans, with two-thirds invested in fixed-income securities having an average life of less than five years. “We have chosen this allocation because we believe that our primary responsibility is to meet the plan’s obligations and not to gamble with our pensioners’ money,” he wrote. The cfo also said that while other plans with a higher proportionate exposure to equities or longer-term bonds would have had higher returns, that also entails risk should the equity markets falter or long-term interest rates rise. Sears will continue to make “significant contributions” to its plan annually so that over time it will be fully funded. The cfo said that one should expects Sears to “continue with this conservative posture. We will leave the comparative performance game to others.”

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