HSBC faces a shareholder vote at next month's annual meeting over an old pension fund for thousands of UK staff which campaigners argue is "unfair". The long-running dispute relates to "clawback" applied to the pension payout when a member reaches retirement age and also receives a state pension. Britain's biggest bank said it would cost £450m to stop the practice for members yet to retire. It is urging its shareholders not to vote for the resolution on 12 April.

The detail of the shareholder vote is set out in the notice for the bank's annual general meeting which is to be held in Birmingham, where it has opened a new headquarters for its UK bank. Requisitioned by the Midland Clawback Campaign Shareholder Group, the resolution calls for the bank to "abolish, or effectively remedy, the unfair discriminatory practice" - also known as "state deduction" - from the pensions paid to members of the now closed 1974 Midland Bank defined benefit pension scheme. HSBC took over Midland in the 1990s and the scheme has 52,000 members who would have been eligible to join between 31 December 1974 and 1 July 1996. Until June 2009, it was a final salary, non-contributory scheme.

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