Defined Benefits

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn called the outline of a pension overhaul proposal floated by a bipartisan panel "positive" and "progress," but he shied away Sunday from saying whether he'd fully back it.

Nearly a year after the reforms were adopted, heres a look at the four changes that have caused the most rancor and are expected to have the greatest impact in stabilizing matters.

The Texas Employees Retirement System will increase its alternative investments next year to $2.4 billion.

The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. will pay out retirement benefits for more than 650 current and future retirees of Allied Systems Holdings Inc.

Moodys has changed its outlook to negative on the general obligation bonds of Huntington, N.Y., because of the towns practice of deferring one-third of its annual pension obligations.

A study by the Tinbergen Institute at VU University Amsterdam found that retiring early reduced a mans risk of dying within five years by 42.3 percent.

The agency is considering a missing participants program for terminating individual account plans, which represent the majority of non-covered plans.

Lawmakers have been trying for two years to try to fix the pension system, which faces an unfunded liability of $100 billion.