Employer pension or lump sum rollover of pension?

[Achiever51]

This just came across the news wire:

General Motors Co. today announced that it will provide select U.S. salaried
retirees a lump-sum payment offer and other retirees with a continued monthly
pension payment securely administered and paid by The Prudential Insurance
Company of America, a Prudential Financial, Inc. company.

[Hud3]

I took the lump sum and rolled it over into an IRA with Vanguard, along with my 401k. Vanguard's financial analysis predicted we could live comfortably with a very small probability of running out of principal. We retired at age 56 in 2001. In spite of a few butterflies in the stomach at first, it's worked out fine. Having that extra lump-sum principal to invest seems to make much more sense to me than having a pension in which the company owns the principal.