Pension Battle May Entangle Mogul's Home

Today's New York Times reports on a pension fund battle with Ohio ties. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the agency that insures pensions, appears poised to lay claim to Ira Rennert's 29-bedroom oceanfront estate in the Hampton's, along with other assets, to make sure he delivers on hundreds of millions of dollars in pensions promised to a group of steelworkers in Ohio. With a hearing scheduled for Monday in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio, in Akron, the pension agency declined to discuss the Rennert case specifically with the Times. But "in every case where there's value that we can chase to cover the pension liabilities," said Randolph J. Clerihue, a spokesman for the agency, "we're going to do so."