On March 25, John Ehrhardt and Paul Morgan presented results of the 2009 Pension Funding Study, Milliman's ninth annual study of the financial reports of the 100 U.S. public corporations that sponsor the largest defined benefit pension plans. As a group, these companies had pension plan assets of more than $900 billion at the end of 2008. The major findings in this year's study include:

• Five years of pension gains wiped out in 2008
• Record losses in pension funded status
• Pension expense declines again in 2008 but will increase significantly in 2009
• Contributions are projected to increase significantly in 2009 and later