Crown Holdings to Transfer $740M in Pension Liabilities to MassMutual

Crown Holdings Inc., a supplier of beverage and food cans, announced Friday plans to transfer $740 million in pension liabilities to the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. in an annuity buyout.

The pension risk transfer transaction for the Yardley, Pennsylvania-based company will cover 12,000 plan participants, which the company said is nearly all its retirees and deferred vested participants in its primary U.S. defined benefit plans.

According to the company’s SEC filings, Crown Holdings had $880 million in plan assets at the end of 2023. The plan had benefit obligations of $1.109 billion. The company’s funded status is 79.38%.

When combined with previous buyouts in Canada and the U.K., Crown Holdings will have annuitized approximately $4 billion of pension liabilities since 2021.

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The company had 25,000 employees in 2023, according to its 2023 annual report. In the same report, Crown Holdings wrote that it had “significant pension plan obligations worldwide and significant unfunded postretirement obligations, which could reduce its cash flow and negatively impact its results of operations and its financial condition.”

Regarding the pension risk transfer with MassMutual, Kevin Clothier, Crown Holdings’ chief financial officer, said in a statement: “This transaction further strengthens Crown’s balance sheet, significantly reduces future earnings and cash flow risk, and maintains secure benefits for our pension plan participants.”

Crown Holdings will contribute $100 million to the plan and will pay a one-time cash charge of $450 million in the third quarter as part of the transaction. MassMutual will begin making payments to participants on November 1.

The pension risk transfer market has surged in 2024, as a record level of pension funding surplus led to companies increasingly offloading their pension obligations to annuity providers. Other large transactions that occurred this year include Verizon’s $5.9 billion PRT to Prudential and RGA Reinsurance, as well as Shell’s $4.9 billion PRT to Prudential.