"Under more normal circumstances, the historic performance of equities in 2019 would have given DB sponsors a much-needed funded status boost, which in turn would have helped accelerate progress down de-risking glidepaths. Instead, the largest 20 US-listed corporate DB sponsors experienced an equally historic rise in liabilities stemming from a crushing drop in discount rates. Global equities returned 27% in 2019 while discount rates fell around 100 bps, leading to a slight decrease of average funded ratio in this group from 85.3% to 84.9%. The funding deficit in dollar terms increased from $137 billion to $151 billion."

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