BBC chiefs ‘rack up biggest pensions ever seen in public sector’
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:03 PM on 05th July 2009
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Two BBC chiefs have racked up taxpayer-funded pensions worth more than £14million – the biggest in the public sector, according to new research.
Deputy director general Mark Byford and creative director Alan Yentob’s retirement funds even dwarf that of Bank of England governor Mervyn King.
Mr Byford, 51, is to receive a pension of at least £229,500 a year from a pot valued at almost £8m, it was claimed today.
Pots of cash: Mark Byford (left) and Alan Yenton have accrued pensions of £14m

This could rise to more than £10m if he works at the BBC until the age of 60.
And Mr Yentob, 62, who is also an arts presenter for the corporation, is thought to have accumulated a pension worth £6.3m, giving an annual retirement income of £216,667 for the rest of his life.
Until now it was thought that Bank chief Mr King had Britain’s largest public sector pension, with a pot valued at £5.7m that would pay a retirement income of £198,613 a year.
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesman, said: ‘As more and more massive public sector pots are revealed, it only strengthens the case for reform.
‘Taxpayers simply cannot afford to be paying lavish pensions for executives who are already extremely well paid.
‘For teachers and nurses these schemes can deliver an appropriate pension, but these figures show that they can deliver obscene retirement packages for senior executives.’
This weekend it also emerged that the BBC has for the past decade rewarded senior executives with lavish receptions and leaving parties, with one farewell costing more than £150,000.
The extravagant send-offs were not disclosed last month when executives’ expenses were published.
The research into BBC executive pensions was carried out by financial services group Hargreaves Lansdown on the request of the Sunday Times.
It came after the corporation rejected the newspapers request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) to disclose the size of pensions held by executives below main board level.
The BBC said the scheme was exempted from FOI because it is managed by a third party.
The analysis found that Mark Thompson, the corporation’s director general, has a second ‘hidden’ BBC pension worth nearly £2.9million.
No details of this pension, accrued between 1979 and 2001, appear in the BBC’s most recent accounts.
They record only the pension rights he has earned since his appointment as director general in 2004, after a short spell at Channel 4.
Similarly, the corporation makes public only the pension earned by Jana Bennett, the director of BBC Vision, since she returned to the BBC in 2002.
It fails to reveal the value of her pension accumulated from 1979 to 1999.
Hargreaves Lansdown calculated how big a pension pot an individual would need to buy a given value of annuity.
The valuations took account of how long the executive had worked at the BBC, their age and current salary.
Members of the BBC’s final salary pension scheme contribute 6.75 per cent of their annual salary to the pension.
The full cost of meeting these pension benefits far exceeds the members’ contributions.
The BBC said: ‘It is irrelevant to talk about how much it would cost to buy these pensions on the open market because they are not on the open market.’

GREEDY BASTARDS!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197613/BBC-chiefs-rack-14m-pensions-funded-taxpayer.html