I am still am not sure where you are getting the $200 million but I am looking into it. Even if that is a correct number, and I would never sneeze at $200 million, it doesn't concern me absent knowing more. In my opinion, the proper way to treat it is exactly as you would debt, assign an interest factor or cost of capital and amortize it over a period of time. Depending on how it is structured, it may actually be very cheap capital that FDC is able to deploy and earn a significant return against. That is the true cost of these funds is less than what conventional debt costs them and they are able to earn their incremental margin on those funds. That is the arbitrage is very positive.
The reality is that FDC currently covers it's interest expense by factor of something like 10x plus so the $200 is hardly an issue, as I would speculate that the liability is definitely reserved for. What would concern me though, is if for some reason, namely the wrong reason, FDC was not funding or reserving for current pension liabilites. That is the number is growing each year and they are not reserving for the liability.
Otherwise as long as there debt to equity ratio is low, which it is inclusive of the pension liablity, so what unless they are pretending the liability doesn't exist, which would surprise me.
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