Key Events Leading to the Termination of the Delphi Defined Benefit Plans

The Delphi Corporation was a global supplier of mobile electronics and transportation systems that began as part of the General Motors Corporation (GM) and was spun off as an independent company in 1999. Following bankruptcy in 2005, Delphi's six qualified defined benefit (DB) plans were terminated and trusteed by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) in July 2009. These terminations culminated from a complex series of events involving Delphi, GM, various unions, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury), as well as PBGC. Congress asked us to examine a range of issues related to PBGC's termination of Delphi's DB plans, such as the decision to terminate, the efforts to secure plan assets, the treatment of collective bargaining agreements, and Treasury's role throughout the process. As discussed with Congressional staff members in December 2010, this report includes a timeline of key events leading to the termination of Delphi's plans. The timeline focuses, in particular, on events related to the reasons for GM providing retirement benefit supplements to certain Delphi employees, but not to others, and Treasury's role in those events. We will compare PBGC's process for terminating Delphi's pension plans with its process for terminating other large, complex plans in a future report.