Optimism at our AGM

Pictured, from the left, Trinity Mirror chief executive Simon Fox, AMP secretary Gerald Mowbray, treasurer Roy White, trustee Andy Golden.

Trinity Mirror chief executive Simon Fox had an upbeat message for AMP members at the Association’s annual meeting in London on October 21, writes TOM BROWN.
He was satisfied with progress on the creation of “a dynamic and growing media business” that would benefit both pensioners and shareholders. And he and chairman of trustees Joanna Matthews both predicted that “a good deal” on company contributions to the pension funds would be signed off soon.

The attendance of Simon Fox and company secretary and group legal director Paul Vickers, and their readiness to answer questions, was significant for the AMP, and welcomed as recognition of the importance of pensions both to AMP members and to Trinity Mirror.

New deputy finance director Philip Brown also attended. He has taken the major responsibility for pensions following a change in reporting procedures at TM.
Simon Fox spoke of the “very special and very unique institution that is Trinity Mirror”. “We believe  the interests of our key stakeholders – our pension funds and our shareholders – are very much aligned. We want to grow in value for all our stakeholders.”

He admitted: “Not everything has gone according to plan. We have been in the news for the wrong reasons recently because of historical legal issues.”
(These “historical legal issues” involve a number of claims relating to phone hacking. MGN has set aside £4 million to deal with civil claims.)
On company finances, Simon Fox said borrowings would be considerably reduced in the current financial year: “This is in part due to the support shown in regard to pension contributions but mainly due to the cash-generative aspect of the business.

“Really, what gives me reassurance is that we have embarked on a very clear strategy for a dynamic and growing media business that is part of our customers’ everyday lives.
“Although print has been declining and is still declining across the market, we want to make sure that we consistently outperform our competitors. I’m delighted to say that the Daily Mirror is consistently outperforming the others as ‘the intelligent tabloid’, and also as the platform for customers to get their up-to-date news on social media, on mobile telephones, tablets and on-screen.
“It is incredibly heartening to see the Mirror is the fastest-growing digital news site in the country, with 90 million unique visitors to our digital websites.
“None of this would be possible if we didn’t have the right people, and what gives me most pleasure of all is that we are attracting and holding the right people and morale has improved right across the company.”

Joanna Matthews revealed that the latest valuation of the pension funds was about to be signed off. She said: “Funding is vital and, while long-term interest rates rose and the performance of our pension scheme investments has been consistently good, there is still a big gap to be plugged.
“The contributions deal we are hoping will be signed off with the company is, I think, a very good one and provides us all with a lot of protection.”
The merger of the “Old Scheme” (Mirror Group Pension Scheme) and the Past Service Scheme with the MGN Pension Scheme (the “New Scheme’’) was still being examined by the Pensions Regulator. The levies payable by the Past Service Scheme to be covered by the Pension Protection Fund, guaranteeing payment of benefits, were being negotiated.
“The mergers are best for members as a whole, but only if we can be sure they are not going to be worse off if certain things were to happen in the future,” she said. “I do hope that in 2015 I will be able to report that the funds have been successfully merged.”

AMP Committee member John Hemple asked a series of tricky questions about funding levels – the difference between the total amount needed to provide all the benefits and the assets available – as a measure of the health of the schemes. It was agreed to review these figures and consult further with the trustees. Treasurer Roy White reported that AMP membership is now 2,496. The meeting voted to continue members’ contingency payments for a further year.
All current AMP officers were re-elected unopposed.

The three candidates for the forthcoming election for trustee “C” directors – Alan Burns, Andy Golden and Russell Stewart – each gave a short address.
The Scottish annual meeting takes place on Monday, November 3 at 11.30am at the Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail office, Central Quay, Glasgow.

AGM October 21

OUR 2014 AGM in London and annual meeting in Scotland – on October 21 and November 3 respectively – will be extra special, writes TOM BROWN.

For the first time, they will be attended by both Trinity Mirror chief executive SIMON FOX and company secretary and group legal director PAUL VICKERS.

We can take their joint presence as recognition of the importance of the pension funds, both to ourselves and to Trinity Mirror.

Deputy group finance director PHILIP BROWN, who has assumed overall responsibility for TM pensions following the retirement of Iain Urquhart, will also attend both meetings.

As I wrote in the latest issue of Mirror Pensioner: “As pensioners, we are all well aware that a successful Trinity Mirror means greater security for our pensions.”

So we will be especially interested to hear first-hand from the company’s top executives on such vital matters as present performance and future strategy, the drive towards digital, dividends, and company pension contributions.

Those who were present at last year’s AGM in London, attended by company chairman David Grigson, will remember it as a lively and informative session.

As in the past, Joanna Matthews, independent chairman of the MGN trustee board, will address both meetings and take questions.

We look forward to a strong attendance from members at both venues for these particularly important meetings.

MAKE A DATE!

AGM – Tuesday, October 21, 11.30am – St Alban’s Centre, Leigh Place, Baldwins Gardens, Holborn, London EC1N 7AB.

SCOTTISH annual meeting – Monday, November 3, 11.30am – Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail office, Central Quay, Glasgow.

Second triumph for playwright Pattinson

FORMER Daily Mirror industrial editor TERRY PATTINSON has written a murder mystery play entitled “Who Killed Captain Bob?”

Terry’s full-length play “Maxwell” won best new play 10 years ago at the Woking Drama Festival.

The new work will be entered at the Spelthorne Drama Festival next October (2015), and was recently performed by Manor Players at the Riverside Arts Theatre, Lower Sunbury. Slough Rotary Club will perform Terry’s whodunnit? next January at Farnham Common.

Terry said: “The play performed to two full houses a few weeks ago at Lower Sunbury Arts Theatre… and will show at that venue next October during the Spelthorne festival. Because it is a drama festival the actors must learn their lines and cannot read from the script (the murder mystery format ).

“All the usual suspects are on stage but, of course, any resemblance to living people is purely coincidental!

“The audience decides who committed the murder based on the actors’ performance and the details they have heard. So there can be a different murderer every show.”

Come to the AGM, says Digger

To all Day reels & Machine room staff. Hope to see some old friends at the meeting this year on October 21. Hope you are all keeping well. Digby Bowry (Digger).

AGM and Scottish annual meeting

Our AGM is on October 21 at the St Alban’s Centre (Leigh Place, Baldwins Gardens, London EC1N 7AB) when you can meet Trinity Mirror’s chief executive SIMON FOX, the principal speaker this year.

We have also invited deputy group finance director Philip Brown, who has assumed overall responsibility for TM pensions following Iain Urquhart’s retirement.

Members will also be updated on all the AMP business of the past year, plus ongoing problems and projects.

Join your pensioner colleagues at the annual general meeting on Tuesday, October 21, at the usual place – the St Alban’s Centre, Baldwin Gardens, off Gray’s Inn Road, London – at the same time as last year, 11.30am.

Speakers:

Simon Fox, Trinity Mirror chief executive

Paul Vickers, Group legal director

Joanna Matthews, independent chairman of the MGN trustee board

THE SCOTTISH annual meeting is on Monday, November 3, at the usual venue, the Daily Record and Sunday Mail offices in Glasgow, with an 11.30am start.

Joanna Matthews and Philip Brown will be the guest speakers. Carol McNamara will also attend.

Jean Carr joins AMP committee

THE Association is delighted to welcome Jean Carr, who has recently joined the AMP committee.

Jean has worked as a staff journalist for more than 35 years on student, local, regional and national newspapers. She was one of the first Mirror Group Newspapers IPC trainees and worked on their papers in Plymouth, Manchester, Dublin and London.

She was Mother of the Chapel (MoC) on the Sunday Mirror in Manchester and for many years the clerk to the Sunday Mirror Chapel in London. Jean has also been a staff journalist on newspaper magazines, including six years as editor of the Sunday Express magazine.

A founder member of Women in Journalism, she is also a member of the Labour Party and the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.

She said: “I’m accepting the invitation to join the Mirror Pensioners’ committee as I feel at this stage in my life I will be more useful there than elsewhere.”

AMP chairman Tom Brown said: “This is great news. Jean will obviously be a decided asset because of her long background of representing her fellow-workers over many years and her outstanding career in newspapers from trainee to editor.

“But she is especially welcome because she also fills a long-recognised need for more input from our women members.

“We have been conscious for some time of the male-female imbalance on the committee and have been seeking to recruit more women. Apart from equality, it sends a signal of our concern for issues that especially affect women pensioners, widows and dependants.

“It also goes without saying that as a founder-member of Women in Journalism and member of the national executive of the BAJ, Jean has a great deal to contribute on a wide field.”

Jean is hoping to be especially active in helping recently bereaved members and their spouses.

Lest we forget

From ROY GREENSLADE’S blog in The Guardian: The Daily Mirror remembers its own D-Day casualty on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the invasion. The paper tells the story of its reporter Ian Fyfe, the only British journalist to die on 6 June 1944.

Fyfe was 25 when he volunteered for a perilous mission to join men from the 9th parachute battalion who were flying into Normandy by glider the night before troops stormed up the beaches. But the glider never made it. It was probably shot down by a German battery on the coast. No wreckage was recovered and, like so many of the fallen, Fyfe’s body was never found.

In his final report before the glider took off he told of joining the soldiers in prayer. He wrote: “The service of dedication was strange, moving – the last before the men parachuted down into enemy territory.

“The padre himself… was jumping with them, taking part in an operation that will make them known to the entire world, an operation on which everything depends.

“As you read this, the men of this airborne unit are already in France. For a week I have been living with these men in a sealed camp… waiting to go into France… despite the narrow boundaries of their tented world, morale has never been higher.”

The Scots-born Fyfe joined the Mirror in 1938 as a 19-year-old trainee and became friendly with another cub reporter, Donald Zec, who went to become Britain’s most famous showbusiness interviewer.

Zec, now 95, recalls Fyfe as “a very good reporter, a very bright chap… I admired him – he had a lot of guts. His death was a great tragedy but he would have enjoyed the adventure and been very enthusiastic.

“He would have had a great career in Fleet Street if he had lived.”

Fyfe, then living in Croydon, had been married for only a year. His wife, Betty, later remarried and died in the 1990s.

Mirror feature writer Tom Parry honoured Fyfe’s memory by placing a wreath at the Bayeux Monument in Normandy, which carries his name and describes him as “war correspondent”. (pictured)

The paper also reminds readers that Bernard Gray, a reporter with the Sunday Pictorial (later renamed the Sunday Mirror) died in a British submarine in May 1942 when it was bombed in the Mediterranean.

*In January 2010, the Sunday Mirror’s defence correspondent, Rupert Hamer, was killed in Afghanistan when the vehicle he was travelling in with US marine corps troops was hit by an improvised explosive device.

Urquhart steps down at Trinity

Pensions Director IAIN URQUHART has announced his departure from Trinity Mirror. He said: “I am not stopping work completely as I will be carrying on with my independent trustee work, and hopefully expanding it.” Urquhart is an associate with BESTrustees… “one of the UK’s leading independent trustee companies”.

As a result of his departure, the company is making significant changes in the pensions office “to properly reflect the increased importance of the Group’s pension schemes to the finances of the company”.

The company’s statement in full: Trinity Mirror announces that it plans to restructure the senior management of its Group Pensions Office in May.

To properly reflect the increased importance of the Group’s pension schemes to the finances of the company, overall leadership of the department will provided by Philip Brown, Deputy Group Finance Director. In addition to leading the department, Philip will provide the Group with advice on valuations, funding and investment strategy.

David Astley, Group Pensions Manager, will have day-to-day management of the pensions office reporting directly to Philip.

After 20 years’ service as Group Pensions Director, Iain Urquhart will step down from that role and leave the Company in August. Until then he will work with Philip and David to ensure a smooth handover.

Iain joined Mirror Group when it was still dealing with the consequences of the Maxwell thefts and played a significant role in stabilising the pension schemes. He was a key player in achieving the Global Settlement with various financial institutions that saw a considerable return of assets to the schemes. He will leave the Group with our thanks and best wishes.

Paul Vickers, Secretary & Group Legal Director

Roy Greenslade on Sly Bailey

From Roy Greenslade’s blog in The Guardian:
Sly Bailey set to scoop another £800,000 from Trinity Mirror. Here is a story guaranteed to sink the hearts of every current and former member ofTrinity Mirror’s staff.
The Sunday Times’s Oliver Shah reports  that the deposed Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey is on the verge of picking up a tranche of shares in the company worth more than £800,000. With TM’s shares having risen to 227p since her enforced departure in June 2012 (with a £900,000 pay-off) she is evidently set to benefit through the company’s executive pay scheme.

When she went, the share price stood at 25p. And, as Shah reminds us, despite TM’s value having fallen by 90% under her tenure, she pocketed millions during her nine-year tenure.

Her successor Simon Fox has out-performed analysts’ expectations without the kind of cost-cutting that was Bailey’s hallmark. Earlier this month, Fox was able to announce a profit upgrade.

Full disclosure: I have a small number of shares in Trinity Mirror and I am in receipt of a Mirror pension.