Indigestible

Stand back, ladies and gentlemen, and see if the once great Reader’s Digest crashes and burns.

The US-based company has been in Chapter 11 (protection from being wound up while restructuring) since August, and were expected to emerge, butterfly-like, in the next couple of days.

However, as The Guardian and others report:

The magazine’s US parent company… said UK regulators had not approved a rescue plan to resolve “a …significant unfunded liability within its UK pension scheme.  In light of this …  RDA … notes that unless the pension deficit issue is resolved it will no longer be able to support the UK business indefinitely”

While much of this is the accountants’ version of brinkmanship, it’s not inconceivable (though improbable) that the UK arm would go into administration and be reborn as some other entity. The only people to suffer would be the employees and the pensioners, so no worries there really.

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