A group of Sotheby’s former employees based in the U.K. are considering taking legal action after the auction house said it would move to end a longstanding pension plan.
Known also as a final salary pension, the plan pays out members a retirement income for life and often sees the employer making contributions to a fund. The amount received in retirement is calculated by salary and number of years worked at Sotheby’s. In many business sectors, existing pension schemes are scarce, with only the largest private employers and those in the public and government-controlled sectors still offering them.
Around 1,200 people are enrolled in Sotheby’s pension plan, which was formed in 1974. Five hundred of them are currently claiming a pension, the Antiquities Trade Gazette reported. In April 2004, Sotheby’s closed participation in the U.K. Pension Plan to new employees.
Sotheby’s owner Patrick Drahi has moved to terminate the plan in a “full wind-up,” selling the plan to two insurance companies. A letter from Sotheby’s Trustees in December 2020 notified plan members of this change. Sotheby’s said in a corporate statement last year that the termination plan would be fully carried out in 2022. (A representative for Sotheby’s said the final stages of this transfer process were initiated in 2018, prior to Patrick Drahi’s acquisition of Sotheby’s.)
The Association of Sotheby’s Pensioners (TASP), a group of the plan’s members that was established in 2016, is now seeking considering...
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