Edith Schippers has left as chairman of the DSM pension fund

ANP

NOS News•today, 21:46•Edited today, 21:49

Edith Schippers is leaving as chairman of the DSM pension fund. She is not standing for election for a new term, writes the PensioenPro magazine.

Schippers is said to have already taken this decision in the autumn due to changes in her work. As CEO of the chemical group, she will have to deal with the upcoming merger of DSM with the Swiss company Firmenich.

In addition, she is going back into politics, as a party leader for the VVD in the Senate. “This presidency takes a lot of time and energy and I want to do it well,” says Schippers. Her term as chairman of the pension fund will expire in May of this year.

Pensioenpot

Last week NRC revealed that Schippers withheld an internal document, which would show that the company itself would be responsible for a significant drop in the funding ratio of the pension fund. DSM needed money for innovations and that was achieved, among other things, by temporarily putting less money into the pension pot.

The company speaks of an internal analysis of public data. DSM says it does not recognize itself in the picture that NRC paints.

NRC writes that the benefits for pensioners have not or hardly been adjusted for inflation for fifteen years due to the money problems. For many former employees, it was especially painful that their pensions did not increase, but former CEO Feike Sijbesma received an extra deposit of more than 2 million euros in his pension pot.

Former manager Marius Weehuizen tells PensioenPro that the pension fund has “consciously and systematically eroded”. The board would have deliberately misrepresented the situation. For him, the note is proof of that. According to Weehuizen, the fund itself has given falling interest rates and aging as causes for the decreased funding ratio.

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