As if it didn’t already have enough to contend with, Unisys Corp now faces a class action lawsuit from thousands of present and retired employees against the company and several officers from people that believe the company should not have invested pension funds in Executive Life Insurance Co, Los Angeles, which was seized by California regulators after it racked up heavy losses in junk bond portfolios: Unisys is believed to have invested some $200m of pension contributions in Executive Life’s guaranteed investment contracts; Executive has been paying individual annuity holders only 70 cents on the dollar but companies investing in the funds have received nothing, and it is this money that the suit is seeking to recover from the company; according to the Wall Street Journal, the suit alleges that one trade union branch at Unisys warned the company that the funds were unsafe and urged it to diversify holdings.
