Royal Dutch Shell has suspended payments to its £12bn (€17.4bn) UK pension fund for at least a year from the end of July. It is the first FTSE 100 company to take a pension holiday since it last took one in 2002, according to investment consultants.

Such suspensions were common in the 1980s and early 1990s, and were a significant factor in the development of funding problems in UK pension schemes when stock markets fell between 2000 and 2003.