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Employee Benefits
9 Months Ended
Sep. 28, 2013
Employee Benefits  
Employee Benefits

Note 6 – Employee Benefits

 

Seaboard maintains two defined benefit pension plans for its domestic salaried and clerical employees.  During the third quarter of 2013, Seaboard completed future funding analyses for these plans and in September 2013 made a deductible contribution of $10,000,000 for the 2012 plan year, principally to avoid future Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation variable rate premiums established pursuant to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.  At this time, no further contributions are expected to be made to these plans for the remainder of 2013.  Seaboard also sponsors non-qualified, unfunded supplemental executive plans, and has certain individual, non-qualified, unfunded supplemental retirement agreements for certain retired employees.  Management has no plans to provide funding for these supplemental plans in advance of when the benefits are paid.

 

The net periodic benefit cost for all of these plans was as follows:

 

 

 

Three Months Ended

 

Nine Months Ended

 

 

 

September 28,

 

September 29,

 

September 28,

 

September 29,

 

(Thousands of dollars)

 

2013

 

2012

 

2013

 

2012

 

Components of net periodic benefit cost:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Service cost

 

$

2,342

 

$

2,221

 

$

7,026

 

$  6,657

 

Interest cost

 

2,028

 

2,220

 

6,131

 

6,655

 

Expected return on plan assets

 

(1,615)

 

(1,608)

 

(4,841)

 

(4,817)

 

Amortization and other

 

1,565

 

1,550

 

4,744

 

4,647

 

Agreement termination gain

 

-

 

-

 

(3,204)

 

-

 

Settlement

 

-

 

-

 

-

 

1,796

 

Net periodic benefit cost

 

$

4,320

 

$

4,383

 

$

9,856

 

$14,938

 

 

In late April 2013, Mr. Joseph E. Rodrigues, Seaboard’s board member and retired former Executive Vice President and Treasurer of Seaboard Corporation, passed away.  During retirement, Mr. Rodrigues received retirement payments under an individual, non-qualified, unfunded supplemental retirement agreement.  Upon his death, this agreement terminated which eliminated the remaining accrued pension liability. This resulted in a one-time agreement termination gain of $3,204,000, or $1,954,000 net of tax, which was recognized in net earnings in addition to a gain of $2,148,000, or $1,310,000 net of tax, from the elimination of unrecognized pension cost in other comprehensive income during the second quarter of 2013.

 

During June 2012 when the actual pension costs for 2012 were finalized, it was determined that a settlement payment made in March 2012 was greater than the actual service cost and interest cost components of the 2012 net periodic pension cost for a non-qualified, unfunded supplemental executive plan.  As a result, during the second quarter of 2012 a settlement loss of $1,796,000 was recorded in the Pork division’s results of operations.