Monday, June 27, 2011 at 7:23AM
Sadly the meeting with Counsel (see May 23 posting below) has determined that there are no significant opportunities for us to seek a litigated resolution of our problem under Scots Law. We will however continue to seek every other route of attack. The PR campaign will continue with even more vigour, as will the activities with MPs, MSPs, MEPs, Unite the union, the Select Committee and the Pension Ombudsman.
Monday, June 6, 2011 at 12:40PM Today there were articles in both The Times and The Scotsman. The articles confirmed that the SNPG had written to the Chairman of the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee asking that the committee investigate Heineken’s behaviour in reneging on their undertaking on pensions. Both articles were the lead in the business section - “Heineken stands accused of reneging on pensions promise” (The Times); “Heineken accused of ‘raw deal’ for S&N pensioners” (The Scotsman). They gave detailed accounts of what Heineken said before the takeover and what they are saying now. Tom Ward acted as spokesman for the group and was widely quoted. We expect follow up from others papers in the next few days.
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 7:42AM The Prudential judgment was published in late April and our lawyers have been carefully considering it. While the Prudential scheme members lost, the judgment is helpful to us in that it clarifies the issues that are common to both the Prudential and the S&N Schemes.
The S&N Scheme is governed by Scots Law, whereas the Prudential Scheme is regulated by English Law. Because of the, sometimes fundamental, differences between the two legal systems, the Prudential judgment may provide an opportunity for us which was found not to be relevant in the Prudential (English Law) case. We are planning to seek further guidance on this from Counsel.