Member Info for fleccy

“We see our role as managing the funding risk in the scheme, and building towards a DIY buyout,” says Naylor, who has been with the scheme for 12 years. Prior to that, he was working for Hermes, with responsibility for building a fund of hedge funds portfolio. "

https://www.ipe.com/interviews/how-we-run-our-money-bt-pension-scheme/10049824.article

"Yep, at a point. The pension review and BT results were released in tandem in May 2018."

No doubt the massive deficit of £11.3 Billion was used to persuade the CWU that backing the BTPS closure was the right thing to do.
I've seen an article stating the the Fund trustees are looking at a DIY insurance buyout by 2035, the way things are heading, it could be a lot sooner.

"Even BT's management board are a bit in the dark until the pension trustee committees et al, choose the final decision on future interest rates and future bond yields to set their stall out and release their chosen interest rates for the future - and thus their calculation of the deficit - as they see it."

I think BT are actually involved in the Triennial Review, and the final decision is reached by negotiation. I'm not so sure the Trustees just come up with their own figures and tell BT what they want. The "BT Group plc Investor meeting slide pack", published in Feb 2021, might give an indication of the ball park area:

"IAS 19 deficit of £4.0bn, net of tax, at 30 September 2020, up £3.0bn since 31 March 2020, reflecting:
– decrease in the real discount rate, reflecting a fall in credit spreads
– partially offset by deficit contributions over the period, and higher than expected asset returns
Discussions with the BT Pension Scheme trustee on triennial funding valuation progressing; aiming to conclude in first half of 2021"

The sentence I'm referring to, is "Discussions with the BT Pension Scheme trustee on triennial funding valuation", which indicates that BT Management also have a input in the way the deficit is calculated.

"I had gone with £3.95b deficit, maybe I was having tea with devil, I don’t believe it’s £1.1b any longer, but it can’t be back to the £8-£10b."

The Pension Teach in, published 7th July 2020 quoted the Gross figures as £7.2bn at 31 March 2019, and £1.1bn at 31 March 2020, so even if the bond spreads mirrored 2019, Deficit contributions since then would reduce the deficit by £1.674 Billion, if I'm reading it correctly. It's like predicting the weather trying to work out where the deficit will be, but I agree even £7.5 Billion feels way too high.
My original guess was £3 to £4 Billion Net, and the IAS 19 deficit was reported as £4.0bn net of tax at 30 September 2020. I'm hoping the September 2020 Deficit is closer to the review finding, than the March 2019 reported figure.

"This is what I'm talking about:
https://www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/xiaomi-redmi-note-10-pro"

Just to clarify, that isn't the phone I ordered, I just used the link to give an example of the quality and Price. The phone in the link is only 4G, but it's going to be a few years before 5G has full coverage anyway. Xiaomi do 5G phones too, and I may decide to purchase a 5G version in a good few years, or go for a different manufacturer where I see value. As you can probably guess, I'm not a tech head, but I like to buy good tech at the right price, not something that's hyped and sold with massive margin.

I quite often wonder about the future earnings of the Tech Giants, and when the current environment will change. They're currently reporting stunning earnings as a result of the pandemic driving up online shopping and services.
In our household, we've got a Fire TV, an Amazon Echo DOT, and an Echo show, and we're Prime users too, so clearly they're doing well. They've also moved into cloud with Amazon Web Services.
I only log into Facebook occasionally, when I get an email notification about friends and family that catches my eye, so I'm not so sure about Facebook.
Apple are innovative, but they're expensive and rely on marketing as well as a fan boy base to hype their products. The problem for Apple is the price of their Tech, and the Chinese upstarts offering value products. As an example of the threat to Apple, I purchased a Xiaomi Redmi Note8 Pro Global Version 6+64GB phone through Gearbest in December 2019; It cost me less than £200, Is an Android phone with a 64 Megapixel Camera, and still works as well today as the day I received it. This is what I'm talking about:
https://www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/xiaomi-redmi-note-10-pro
The Media space is getting ever more crowded with Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple Tv, etc, etc, selling content. As competition grows margins will get hammered over time.
Google have taken over the search Engine world, and moved into cloud to compete with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and many others. The more competition, the more margin reduction. Cloud services need local servers and trans global communication capacity, and none of this is cheap. Google have their advertising, and offer loads of great apps, like Google Maps offered free of charge, and must be reaching peak strength in their core offerings.
Governments/Regulators are now scrutinising the Tech Giants and their strength will eventually be their weakness imo. Like BT has had to suffer constant regulatory pressure from Ofcom, the Tech Giants will eventually be in the same boat, but across the World from many regulators.
Bitcoin and Crypto has just been hyped into orbit, and the music will eventually stop playing, leaving many bewildered and wondering what happened imo. Blockchain is a useful technology, but I don't understand why it's being used to develop Cryptocurrencies with no tangible value, again just my opinion.
In conclusion, once you reach the top of the hill there's only one way to go, but what do I know?

Just checked your link Velo, and I notice they've allocated two rows to the pension:

MEMO: IAS 19 pension deficit (£bn, net of tax)
MEMO: June 2020 Pension funding deficit (£bn, gross)

The figures quoted are in the "Pension funding deficit (£bn, gross)" row

When I talk about the deficit, I'm referring to IAS 19 Net of Tax figure, for the Gross deficit £7.5 Billion seems the most plausible. They haven't listed Net of Tax figures unfortunately.

"They're still forecasting almost nearly £10bn deficit at £9.75bn"

I find that somewhat baffling. Since the 2017/18 Triennial review, BT have paid in £4.5 Billion, and the pension trustees are in the process of de-risking.
Since the pension scheme is now frozen, you'd think the liabilities would reduce year on year as benefits are paid out. Since BT have paid £4.5 Billion in, since the last Triennial review, and assets have actually increased since 2017, you'd think the deficit would be considerably lower than 2017. To me, £7.5 Billion feels too high, so I'd bet the deficit would be lower than£7.5 Billion Net of tax, unfortunately we have to wait a bit longer to find out.

"I’m not sure the author knows this business or done his homework. Openreach doesn’t (I think) own the network. "

BT own the nuts and bolts, but Openreach are the infrastructure provider as far as the various ISP's are concerned. My issue was showing Sky as its own infrastructure provider when it isn't.

"I’m going to be bold and say there could be a special dividend within 18 months. Nothing serious but one none the less."

That'd be nice, but I don't see any special dividends until FTTP and 5G are completed. The media herd mentality has been to bash BT about debt, pension and earnings at every opportunity. I think Jansen is laser focused on rolling out FTTP primarily, and 5G secondarily, in tandem with the cost savings, associated with building closures and staff reductions. I don't believe BT's debt is an issue, but they are constantly bashed about it, so debt reduction will also be his priority imo.

Just to add to my last post, I had a look at the chart on statista and it doesn't show the infrastructure provider, so that must have been added by the author.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/387678/uk-market-share-of-internet-service-providers/

I'm not on Twitter, but I probably would have messaged Megan Boxall to clarify.

The bar chart on the Investor Chronicle article shows as Sky (Sky), I would have thought it should show Sky (Openreach). Anyone know the reason for this anomaly, or is it creative journalism?

"initially you claimed (backed up by promoting your expertise) that a MAC address or unique identifier never leaves layer 2 or that a vpn services & or encryption would protect you anyway"

Aus, you're just diverting attention from your assertion that Netflix, Sky, or whoever, will be able to track you through a MAC address on your computer interfaces, if you use a pirating service, which is clearly wrong. The MAC address is just a physical identifier to allow devices on a layer 2 LAN to identify each other locally, and is used by Address Resolution Protocol to map an IP address to a particular MAC address for directing the traffic. If you plugged a WiFi Dongle into a USB port on your laptop, and disabled the WiFi on the motherboard, the Network would only see the MAC address of the Dongle and nothing more, so in your scenario how would anyone identify a specific user under those circumstances. As I pointed out previously, anyone could mask their motherboard network port MAC addresses by spoofing in software, the other way is to use a dongle if you were that paranoid, not that it matters because no one is tracked via MAC addresses on public networks anyway, because it's impossible to do.

"For regulatory capital purposes, Barclays has accrued an ordinary dividend in Q121 of 0.75p based on a 3p dividend for the full year."

Good question, maybe they're saying they've put aside 0.75p per share, with the intention of eventually paying 3p per share for the Full year.

"The point is unless there is serious crime to be looked into, nobody is going to attempt to track down millions of people streaming content that perhaps should be paid for"

Indeed, I'm sure the National Cyber Crime Unit will commit 1000's of man hours tracking down someone receiving pirate content, and disregard other national threats. Of course they wont.

SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol is a signalling system used in VOIP calling. In an office environment, it's possible that the MAC address might be used to identify a particular phone, register it, and allocate it an extension number, as well as identifying the user. It's not relevant in the cases we were discussing and would be more applicable to managed systems, like Cisco Call Manager, etc, within a work environment.

"So one minute according to you “Mac stays in L2 “ & now you are identifying how important it is to mask it. Make your mind up, sounds like the kind of confusion that happens when you don’t really understand."

Spoofing MAC addresses can be used to circumvent security on L2 networks, where a specific MAC address is blocked for some reason, or someone may want to use spoofing because they're paranoid. I only mentioned it because you brought up the subject of tracing someone by their MAC address, which is virtually impossible without illegally placing software on someone's computer.

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/change-mac-address-windows-10-why/

https://www.alphr.com/change-mac-address-android/

"Glad we’ve established MAC address will give you away at L4. It’s also v. Obvious if it’s cloned & doing it in software doesn’t do it if the chipset in your “unique” interface still has it hard coded!!!!!"

Ok the MAC address is a physical address on the interfaces within your laptop, or PC. To access the MAC address from within the PC, you need to have software installed on said PC, ie some sort of Trojan software. On the computer there's a couple of ways to recover the MAC addresses, one is ARP -a, another is Ipconfig/all, and another is through system information. The MAC address is used to communicate between layer 2 interfaces, so all MAC addresses will be visible on a LAN, or VLAN, and will show on the routers ARP table, but stop there with only IP address information transmitted onwards.
Unless you have software on your computer that allows access to administrative functions, the MAC address stays on the home network and goes no further. As far as phones are concerned, the same applies to the WiFi interface there too.
In summary, unless you have some way of installing trojan software on a computer, or device, the MAC address goes no further than the home router. Incidentally, the same applies to Wifi hotspots, like pubs, clubs, etc. It's possible that commercial routers may be connected to a server, that records MAC entries against IP addresses, but that wouldn't be common.

"Who guess £7.5bln......I think it was Velo ?"

That's a highly speculative figure. Is the quoted "£7.5bln" IAS 19 Net of Tax, or Gross of Tax, or is it the estimated actuarial funding shortfall? Disregarding the fact that it's a guess anyway. Back in 2017, the shortfall was said to be over £11 Billion, but an IAS 19 deficit of £5.3bn (net of tax), was reported for the 31 March 2018, in the Final results. I suppose the press will shape the narrative to suit vested interests.

"Usually I can gauge this from local chats but not this time.
A lot worried BT could do the same as the Gas board and sack them.
But union guy feels confident
Thoughts?"

From your posts, you appear to be more plugged in than me, and possibly most on here. My view is based on my perception of UK culture generally. When I look around, I see lots of rubbish Gig economy type jobs, so if I was a BT Engineer striking would be a no for me. BT Employee's are lucky to have jobs with a defined career structure, and opportunities to move in varied directions depending on how they want to develop their careers. There are other jobs out there, like delivering for Amazon, DPD, and just eat, or maybe become an Uber driver, or stack shelves at Tesco. Hypothetically speaking, if it was me, I'd be very reluctant to strike with a big mortgage and lots of bills to pay. Just my opinion.