I was 39 when they switched plans.. 18yrs of service but only 39 so I got the new plan. Can't believe this is legal. Wouldn't this be age discrimination? Met company requirements to retire but they say not old enough to collect the medical money? Telling me I have to wait till I'm 55 makes sense but forfeit it all has to be against the law... Some law.. Anyone know if anyone ever challenged this in court? I would suspect IBM had it's attorneys lock this down but curious. I would bet that if this got in front of a jury they would side with the employee.. But guessing that will never happen.

This depends on whether you are on the old pension plan, 1st or 2nd choicers could retire with 30 years and get their FHA when they turned 55. Now with Cash-balance folks, born after June 1959, they need to be 55 and 15 years service to claim their FHA money. I believe if they are 54 and 14 years service, they might be able to get a bridge to FHA eligibility, but maybe not since with 30 years they are retirement eligible already. This is why it is called the Future Hell Account.

Are you age 54? If so you can bridge to retirement. Otherwise it's a crappy deal, agreed.

Anyone else in this boat. Terminated from the company, forced to retire, more then enough years to retire but forfeiting the FHA account because not 55 years old? What kind of nonsense is this? I could see not being able to access the account until 55 years old but forfeit it? Doesn't seem legal..

Be that as it may, I had PURPOSELY ignored the invitation, as that is a popular spamming technique.

No one has been involuntarily subscribing folks to this forum. Ever.
I invited you to join 2 days ago. Here is what my moderator log shows:

Jun 12, 2013 8:24 am n6mon <Email Private> Invited to join by ret99_99

I invited you and 99 other members of the ibmpension board about that time. Apparently, you had mail forwarding set up and/or a delegation or out of office option set on your email to automatically reply to emails because there was an immediate response of:

Jun 12, 2013 8:24 am xxxxx@... Accepted invitation to join
Jun 12, 2013 8:24 am xxxxx@... Joined group via email

Currently, when Yahoo receives an email reply to an invitation, it interprets this to be an invitation accept and goes ahead and subscribes the email address as a subscriber to the group.

Anyone know who has been involuntarily subscribing folks to this forum?

How do I know I did not do it? Well, the email address that this "helpful" person used was a business address (not the one you may see now) that is NOT nor has ever been used on Yahoo.

While I AM a retired IBMer and I AM drawing a pension, I did NOT sign myself up for this group.

开云体育

---

From: Steve
Sent: 13/06/2013 18:02
To: ibmpensionissues@...
Subject: [ibmpensionissues] Re: Issues with the ibmpension board

Does anybody care?
Grow up.

I'm not going to disagree with most of what has been said, but I don't think you should leave the board. I think October may be very interesting with regards to health care. I am a bit on edge about what IBM may do this year now that the exchanges will begin to appear, at least in some states. The ibmpension board could be a good source of information to keep on top of what's happening and how to make sense of it all. BTW, totally and vehemently agree about the Boeing stuff.

开云体育

Yes, for sure! Life is freaking great!

I have given serious thought to leaving the ibmpension board but have not yet made that leap. I did a search on the ibmpension board and found several posts that you made there recently but did not find your ID in the members list. Did you leave recently?

Agree-My advice would be to leave the board; moderation is very inconsistent, and one of the moderators participates way too much.

And, they don't really discuss the IBM pension Plan all that often.
And there's always the meaningless Boeing discussion that has no effect on the IBM Pension Plan!

Use the same time you waste there in some volunteer work, exercise etc.!

The description of this board says "A place to talk about issues with the ibmpension board." I have some issues with the ibmpension board. My biggest issue is about one of the things that is written in the description section of that board:

"Posts will be deleted if: ... 3) They denigrate other people."

During the last several days there have been a high percentage of posts that denigrate other people. That is my opinion and others may disagree with me and I welcome comments from others who do disagree with me. I say that if denigration of other people is allowed the description should be changed to eliminate the false claim that it is not allowed.

Other opinions about this? Does anyone agree? Does anyone disagree?

Are there any other IBM employees or retirees that participate in this?

Reply-To: no_reply@... X-Yahoo-Post-EncIP: VigFDRjychTogg59t903sjA-cYjWijRCzVayZq5p8thCvzOb Subject: Annual Meeting of Stockholders April 30, 2013 Huntsville Alabama X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u?768311; y=ckRGzDb01lWOIxugrJEpX3eb9_9XGmDkeVnUinbndsLNv3eucdD1; email=no X-Yahoo-Profile: choicer27yrs --9-2199290256-1538173942=:6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable http://www.ibm.com/investor/services/2013-report-on-the-company.wss#repo\ rtOnTheCompany Ginni Rometty Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, IBM 2013 IBM Annual Meeting of Stockholders April 30, 2013 Huntsville, Alabama I will now provide a report on your company. It is important to understand IBM's long term model. We are an innovation company. This means that we pursue continuous transformation. That is why IBM has been in existence for more than 100 years and why we will thrive for another century. We pursue this continuous-transformation model in six key ways. First, we remix to higher value — in our portfolio, in our organic R&D investment, and through targeted acquisitions and divestitures. For example, two decades ago, 70 percent of our researchers were working in materials science and hardware. Today, 60 percent are in fields that support key growth areas, such as analytics and cloud computing. All the while, we have continued to lead the world in innovation — earning the most U.S. patents for 20 straight years, with a record 6,478 in 2012. Our balanced approach to acquisitions has built a strong track record since 2000, with more than 140 acquisitions that complement our portfolio and strategy. At the same time, we have divested almost $15 billion of annual revenue over the past decade. If we had not done so, we would be a larger company today, but with lower margins and capabilities that are less valued by our clients. Second, we make markets. We do so by category, such as new solutions like MobileFirst, Social Business and Smarter Commerce, and new systems categories, such as our PureSystems family. We also make markets by enabling a new generation of IT buyers, from Chief Marketing Officers to heads of Human Resources. And we make markets by geography — opening 144 new branches in emerging markets in 2012 alone. This is much more than setting up sales offices. It is about helping to build the economic, technological and societal infrastructure that will make entire regions competitive in the global economy — as we are now doing across sub-Saharan Africa, including the opening of our 12th IBM Research lab in Nairobi, Kenya. Third, we reinvent core franchises: Our System z enterprise server, introduced in 2012, is just the latest reinvention of the mainframe, and it drove System z's largest capacity shipment ever during the fourth quarter. New workloads, including those on Linux, have crossed over to become the majority of work for the mainframe. Another example is in software, where core software platforms like WebSphere have been entirely transformed. Fourth, we remix our skills and expertise: Over the past three years we have increased our skill base in analytics by more than 8,100 experts. We have also added nearly 9,500 experts in high-growth industry areas - such as healthcare, energy and banking. Fifth, we reinvent the enterprise itself: In addition to continually enhancing our productivity, we are taking the next step toward becoming a Smarter Enterprise. This includes the application of analytics to every part of our business. It also means using social technologies to change how our employees work, learn and collaborate. Sixth, we use our strong cash flow strategically: It fuels reinvestment in the business and consistently strong returns to you, our owners In 2012, this model produced solid results. Your company continued to outperform our industry and the market at large. We achieved record profit, record free cash flow and record earnings per share. This marked 10 straight years of double-digit earnings-per-share growth. While our revenues of $104.5 billion were flat at constant currency, IBM's operating pre-tax income margin rose for the tenth consecutive year—to 22.2 percent, up 12 points since 2000. As I mentioned, our strong cash flow enables us to invest in the future and return high value to you. * In 2012 we invested $3.7 billion for 11 acquisitions in key areas of software and services and $4.3 billion in net capital expenditures. We spent $6.3 billion on R&D. * We were able to return $15.8 billion to you—$12 billion through share repurchases and $3.8 billion through dividends. Last year's dividend increase was 13 percent, marking the 17th year in a row in which we have raised our dividend, and the 97th consecutive year in which we have paid one. * And, as I announced earlier, we have extended those streaks by increasing the dividend again, by 12 percent. While we were not satisfied with some aspects of our results for the first quarter of 2013, we continued to make progress on our Road Map objectives — growing EPS by 8 percent, and returning $3.5 billion to you. Of our $70 billion goal for returns to investors through dividends and share repurchases over the five years of our 2015 Road Map, we have already returned almost $40 billion to you. To sustain a long-term innovation model in our industry, a company must do more than accommodate major technology shifts. It must lead them. IBM has done this repeatedly over the past century—not only pioneering new technology models, but capturing the significant economic value they create. Today, another new wave is sweeping in—powered by analytics, mobile, social and cloud technologies, and the so-called "Big Data" they generate. This represents a major shift in information technology - from the back office to the front office, into the core activities of businesses, institution and societies. We anticipated this shift with Smarter Planet, describing a world that was becoming instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. In the five years since its launch, the goal of building a Smarter Planet has had a transformational impact both in the marketplace and inside IBM. It has engaged leaders around the world in reimagining their systems of retail, supply chain, healthcare, energy, telecommunications, transportation, food, water, public safety and more. For IBM itself, Smarter Planet is not only driving growth, but also speaking to IBMers' aspiration to be essential to each of our vital constituencies. This is our purpose as an enterprise—to be essential to our investors, our clients, our communities and our partners in realizing their most ambitious hopes. Being essential takes many forms. * It means investing, through good times and bad, in the kind of fundamental research that produces new capabilities for business, society and individuals. Capabilities such as Watson, our pioneering cognitive computer that isn't programmed, it learns. * It means applying those breakthroughs to the world's most important work. For instance, since its debut on Jeopardy!, Watson has gone to medical school. It is learning from leading universities, hospitals and healthcare providers, such as Columbia University, Wellpoint Insurance and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center: how to transform patient treatment... how to help healthcare professionals become more productive... how to make better diagnostic decisions about cancer and other highly complex diseases. * Being essential also means helping our clients transform not just their operations, but their roles — reimagining what it means to be a police chief, a doctor, a marketer, a mayor. * Being essential means reinventing not just how computers learn, but how children are educated — as we are doing at our pioneering Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-TECH, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Cited by President Barack Obama in his 2013 State of the Union address, this radical new educational model for grades 9-14 is being replicated by states across the U.S. * Finally, being essential means engaging with the world in new, more direct and human ways. * One example is IBM's Corporate Service Corps, which is modeled on the Peace Corps and is marking its fifth anniversary this year. Each year, hundreds of our best and brightest employees collaborate with community leaders, government officials and NGOs in emerging markets around the world. More than 2,200 IBMers have deployed on more than 750 team assignments — on health care for poor women and children in Nigeria; clean water and food safety in Vietnam; and economic development in Ghana and Turkey — among many others. * Another example is our Smarter Cities Challenge, launched in 2010 to help 100 cities address some of their most critical challenges. Right now we're in the most active period in the program's history, as we send teams to 15 cities in 12 weeks - from Porto Allegre, Brazil, to Fresno, California. The impact on communities of these initiatives has been extraordinary — and the impact on IBMers has been just as powerful. Many describe it as the most meaningful experience of their careers. In closing, let me express my deep pride in the worldwide IBM team for bringing us to where we are, and my gratitude to you, our shareholders, for your unwavering support. I hope you share our excitement about your company's continuous transformation and the way in which IBMers are building a brighter future for our clients and a smarter planet for us all. Thank you. --9-2199290256-1538173942=:6 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

http://www.ibm.com/investor/services/2013-report-on-the-company.wss#reportOnTheCompany

Ginni Rometty
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, IBM
2013 IBM Annual Meeting of Stockholders
April 30, 2013
Huntsville, Alabama

I will now provide a report on your company.

It is important to understand IBM's long term model. We are an innovation company. This means that we pursue continuous transformation. That is why IBM has been in existence for more than 100 years and why we will thrive for another century. We pursue this continuous-transformation model in six key ways.

First, we remix to higher value — in our portfolio, in our organic R&D investment, and through targeted acquisitions and divestitures. For example, two decades ago, 70 percent of our researchers were working in materials science and hardware. Today, 60 percent are in fields that support key growth areas, such as analytics and cloud computing. All the while, we have continued to lead the world in innovation — earning the most U.S. patents for 20 straight years, with a record 6,478 in 2012.

Our balanced approach to acquisitions has built a strong track record since 2000, with more than 140 acquisitions that complement our portfolio and strategy. At the same time, we have divested almost $15 billion of annual revenue over the past decade. If we had not done so, we would be a larger company today, but with lower margins and capabilities that are less valued by our clients.

Second, we make markets. We do so by category, such as new solutions like MobileFirst, Social Business and Smarter Commerce, and new systems categories, such as our PureSystems family. We also make markets by enabling a new generation of IT buyers, from Chief Marketing Officers to heads of Human Resources. And we make markets by geography — opening 144 new branches in emerging markets in 2012 alone. This is much more than setting up sales offices. It is about helping to build the economic, technological and societal infrastructure that will make entire regions competitive in the global economy — as we are now doing across sub-Saharan Africa, including the opening of our 12th IBM Research lab in Nairobi, Kenya.

Third, we reinvent core franchises: Our System z enterprise server, introduced in 2012, is just the latest reinvention of the mainframe, and it drove System z's largest capacity shipment ever during the fourth quarter. New workloads, including those on Linux, have crossed over to become the majority of work for the mainframe. Another example is in software, where core software platforms like WebSphere have been entirely transformed.

Fourth, we remix our skills and expertise: Over the past three years we have increased our skill base in analytics by more than 8,100 experts. We have also added nearly 9,500 experts in high-growth industry areas - such as healthcare, energy and banking.

Fifth, we reinvent the enterprise itself: In addition to continually enhancing our productivity, we are taking the next step toward becoming a Smarter Enterprise. This includes the application of analytics to every part of our business. It also means using social technologies to change how our employees work, learn and collaborate.

Sixth, we use our strong cash flow strategically: It fuels reinvestment in the business and consistently strong returns to you, our owners

In 2012, this model produced solid results. Your company continued to outperform our industry and the market at large. We achieved record profit, record free cash flow and record earnings per share. This marked 10 straight years of double-digit earnings-per-share growth. While our revenues of $104.5 billion were flat at constant currency, IBM's operating pre-tax income margin rose for the tenth consecutive year—to 22.2 percent, up 12 points since 2000.

As I mentioned, our strong cash flow enables us to invest in the future and return high value to you.

• In 2012 we invested $3.7 billion for 11 acquisitions in key areas of software and services and $4.3 billion in net capital expenditures. We spent $6.3 billion on R&D.
• We were able to return $15.8 billion to you—$12 billion through share repurchases and $3.8 billion through dividends. Last year's dividend increase was 13 percent, marking the 17th year in a row in which we have raised our dividend, and the 97th consecutive year in which we have paid one.
• And, as I announced earlier, we have extended those streaks by increasing the dividend again, by 12 percent.

While we were not satisfied with some aspects of our results for the first quarter of 2013, we continued to make progress on our Road Map objectives — growing EPS by 8 percent, and returning $3.5 billion to you. Of our $70 billion goal for returns to investors through dividends and share repurchases over the five years of our 2015 Road Map, we have already returned almost $40 billion to you.

To sustain a long-term innovation model in our industry, a company must do more than accommodate major technology shifts. It must lead them. IBM has done this repeatedly over the past century—not only pioneering new technology models, but capturing the significant economic value they create.

Today, another new wave is sweeping in—powered by analytics, mobile, social and cloud technologies, and the so-called "Big Data" they generate. This represents a major shift in information technology - from the back office to the front office, into the core activities of businesses, institution and societies.

We anticipated this shift with Smarter Planet, describing a world that was becoming instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. In the five years since its launch, the goal of building a Smarter Planet has had a transformational impact both in the marketplace and inside IBM. It has engaged leaders around the world in reimagining their systems of retail, supply chain, healthcare, energy, telecommunications, transportation, food, water, public safety and more.

For IBM itself, Smarter Planet is not only driving growth, but also speaking to IBMers' aspiration to be essential to each of our vital constituencies. This is our purpose as an enterprise—to be essential to our investors, our clients, our communities and our partners in realizing their most ambitious hopes.

Being essential takes many forms.

• It means investing, through good times and bad, in the kind of fundamental research that produces new capabilities for business, society and individuals. Capabilities such as Watson, our pioneering cognitive computer that isn't programmed, it learns.
• It means applying those breakthroughs to the world's most important work. For instance, since its debut on Jeopardy!, Watson has gone to medical school. It is learning from leading universities, hospitals and healthcare providers, such as Columbia University, Wellpoint Insurance and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center: how to transform patient treatment... how to help healthcare professionals become more productive... how to make better diagnostic decisions about cancer and other highly complex diseases.
• Being essential also means helping our clients transform not just their operations, but their roles — reimagining what it means to be a police chief, a doctor, a marketer, a mayor.
• Being essential means reinventing not just how computers learn, but how children are educated — as we are doing at our pioneering Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-TECH, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Cited by President Barack Obama in his 2013 State of the Union address, this radical new educational model for grades 9-14 is being replicated by states across the U.S.
• Finally, being essential means engaging with the world in new, more direct and human ways.
• One example is IBM's Corporate Service Corps, which is modeled on the Peace Corps and is marking its fifth anniversary this year. Each year, hundreds of our best and brightest employees collaborate with community leaders, government officials and NGOs in emerging markets around the world. More than 2,200 IBMers have deployed on more than 750 team assignments — on health care for poor women and children in Nigeria; clean water and food safety in Vietnam; and economic development in Ghana and Turkey — among many others.
• Another example is our Smarter Cities Challenge, launched in 2010 to help 100 cities address some of their most critical challenges. Right now we're in the most active period in the program's history, as we send teams to 15 cities in 12 weeks - from Porto Allegre, Brazil, to Fresno, California.

The impact on communities of these initiatives has been extraordinary — and the impact on IBMers has been just as powerful. Many describe it as the most meaningful experience of their careers.

In closing, let me express my deep pride in the worldwide IBM team for bringing us to where we are, and my gratitude to you, our shareholders, for your unwavering support. I hope you share our excitement about your company's continuous transformation and the way in which IBMers are building a brighter future for our clients and a smarter planet for us all.

Thank you.

--9-21

Is there something he knows. Food for thought.

Annual Meeting of Stockholders on Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 10 a.m.,
in the Von Braun Center, Huntsville, Alabama.

It is about a 100 mile drive for me. I am thinking about going. Anyone else thinking about it?