Employee Benefits

9 Months Ended

Sep. 27, 2014

Employee Benefits

Employee Benefits

Note 6 – Employee Benefits

Seaboard maintains two defined benefit pension plans for its domestic salaried and clerical employees.  At this time, no contributions are expected to be made to these plans for the remainder of 2014.  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 27,		September 28,		September 27,		September 28,
(Thousands of dollars)	2014		2013		2014		2013
Components of net periodic benefit cost:
Service cost	$     1,924		$  2,342		$  5,784		$  7,026
Interest cost	2,404		2,028		7,225		6,131
Expected return on plan assets	(2,173	)	(1,615	)	(6,537	)	(4,841	)
Amortization and other	524		1,565		1,575		4,744
Agreement termination gain	-		-		-		(3,204	)
Net periodic benefit cost	$     2,679		$  4,320		$  8,047		$  9,856

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.