Aegon Agrees Pension Payment to End Six-Year Dispute

(April 14, 2014) — The end of a six-year pension dispute over restrictions on the capital of the Dutch harbour workers’ former pension fund looks to be in site after the fund and Aegon agreed to a settlement.

The Dutch harbour workers’ pension fund, known as BPVH, agreed to an €80 million payment by Aegon, the owners of an insurer which previously provided a pension fund to some of BPVH’s workers.

The legal tussle began back in June 2008, when BPVH and Aegon reached an impasse in their dispute over the ownership of the €1.3 billion proceeds of the sale of insurer Optas Group to Aegon.

The proceeds of the sale of Optas and its associated pension fund—one of four pension options at BPVH—were being used as an art subsidy rather than for pension benefits.

There were several false dawns in the lead up to today’s settlement—the Optas Foundation, which was given the while assets the dispute was ongoing and intended to use the proceed of the sale for social and cultural purposes such as the subsidy of art, initially offered €350 million to improve the pension rights of 48,000 policyholders in 2008.

This offer was mulled by BPVH until the end of the year, but was eventually rejected. Then at the beginning of 2009 when Aegon completed its acquisition of Optas, a further dispute was raised by BPVH over the restricted equity tied up in the deal. The harbour employees argued this restricted equity should have been released to supplement their pensions.

In 2010, BPVH agreed to a €500 million payment from the Optas Foundation, but argued as part of the settlement that it would retain the option to continue to challenge Aegon over its right to the restricted equity, saying the proceeds of the Optas sale and were additional to the accrued pension rights.

It is this final dispute which has been brought to an end today—Aegon and BPVH have agreed to jointly file a request with a Dutch court to remove the restriction on the capital of Optas.

Upon the court granting this request, Aegon will make the €80 million payment to BPVH described above, as well as offer harbour workers more favourable pension conditions. In addition, over the coming years Aegon will contribute up to €20 million to help mitigate the effect of an announced reduction in the tax-free pension allowance in the Netherlands.