More than a fifth of UK pension trustees say they have experienced conflicts of interest between safeguarding workers' benefits and keeping their company solvent.

The finding, from a survey of 157 trustees conducted by actuarial consultancy Hymans Robertson, comes at a time when the UK's pension trustees are under the spotlight. In some cases, commercially crippling deficits have led to multi-billion pound payouts, such as the £800m (€1.2bn) agreed by British Airways.