Lockheed Martin Corporation, an advanced technology company, was formed in March 1995 with the merger of two of the world's premier technology companies, Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta Corporation. Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin employs about 130,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced technology systems, products and services.
A pension plan is an arrangement whereby an employer provides benefits to employees after they retire for services they provided while they were working. The company or employer is the organization sponsoring the pension plan. It incurs the cost and makes contributions to the pension fund. The fund or plan is the entity that receives the contributions from the employers, administers the pension assets, and makes the benefit payments to the pension recipients. Most companies analyze their pension plans during the fourth quarter. These calculations are done annually, and significant changes may prompt companies to issue earnings guidance before reporting their year-end results in January.
Companies may offer two types of pension plans: a defined contribution plan or a defined benefit plan. In a defined contribution (or profit-sharing) plan, the employer does not guarantee the plan's future performance ? the future value of benefits paid to employees is unknown. The employer makes contractual fixed payments (or a specified portion of net income, if it is a variable profit-sharing plan), but the employee assumes the risk for investment performance. Accounting for defined contribution plans is a simple and straightforward process; however defined benefit plans, involve many complicated calculations to determine the benefits prov ...