Boosted by a strong stock market in the second half of 2006, pension funds in the Standard & Poor’s 500 reduced their underfunding from $140 billion to an estimated $36 billion, S&P says.
The rating service’s preliminary review of its 2006 Pensions and Other Post Employment Benefits Report, to be released in June, expects the funding ratio for biggest companies’ pensions to increase from 0.90 in 2005 to an estimated 0.98 in 2006.