The UK's Universities Superannuation Scheme, the country's second-biggest pension fund, could stop offering its generous final-salary pensions if proposals from its sponsoring employers - the universities - are adopted next month. Such a move would bring the USS in line with a host of other public and private sector funds, which have ditched their final-salary plans in recent years.

Unveiling their cost-cutting ideas at an event in London yesterday, the Employers Pension Forum, a body co-ordinating the universities' stance on the £28bn (€34bn) scheme, warned it was becoming increasingly unaffordable thanks to expected cuts to UK Government spending on higher education.