Specialist materials manufacturer Owens Corning has agreed a deal with an unnamed insurer to offload nearly $300m of its pension liabilities via a bulk purchase annuity contract.
The Ohio-based firm made the statement in a 10-Q filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission where it revealed a $291m deal to offload both US and non-US pension liabilities was struck on October 12 this year.
The deal is slated to close in the fourth quarter of 2023 and in its 10K filing, Owen Corning said that the transaction would be funded via the pension schemeu2019s $268m worth of assets.
As part of the deal the firm will record a pre-tax settlement charge of $135m to $150m, the result of an accelerated recognition of actuarial losses linked to the pension scheme.
The US pension risk transfer (PRT) market has seen a spike of activity over the last two years, and according to results of MetLifeu2019s 2023 PRT Poll, nine out of ten of US corporates are planning to offload their defined benefit pensions plans over the next four years.