I am off for a day discussing the “end game” at the City. I am given a promise about “Shaping the Path to Stronger Outcomes”, where we’ll explore the decisions shaping how schemes are executing the endgame.
I’ll take part in focused discussions and hear from leading schemes on how they are navigating insurer engagement, transaction readiness and surplus strategy. I’ll leave equipped to make purposeful, informed decisions that secure members’ futures and support meaningful progress across the UK pensions landscape.
Well one of the things that I’ll want sorting out is how confident I can be that what is happening the money shipped across the pond to be “invested” in private credit in the USA, is safe. Take Apollo which now owns the Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC).
The capacity of large fund managers in the USA to pay claims from people trying to get out of semi-liquid funds is worrying.
The FT tells us
Apollo Global Management has limited redemptions from one of its flagship private credit vehicles, becoming the latest investment manager seeking to staunch outflows as wealthy investors retreat from the industry.
The fund also posted its first monthly loss in February in more than three years, reporting a -0.07 per cent return.
The loss in part reflected a sell-off in more liquid loans, which Apollo uses to mark the value of private loans it holds that do not trade.
I remember 20 years ago not being concerned that banks like Bear Stearns were getting into trouble with credit. For a little while we were mildly amused until its re-occurrence at Lehman Brothers.
I do not understand America in any sense and I don’t want its financial winners losing my pension.
We have a death wish on our pensions. We want them off our hands in gold-plated annuities run by insurers that can’t fail. But there is an alternative. Rather than the euthanasia of buy in and then buy-out , we could look after our pensions for the extent that members are alive – which could be a very long time.
We could use superfunds, as Ashok Gupta and others are arguing.
New Capital Consensus is a coalition of non-for-profit, apolitical organisations that have come together to explore how the current UK investment system contributes to the country’s current problems of low productivity, inequality and low levels of investment. Its objective is to find ways to release investment capital to address societal problems, like those above and in particular, to green the economy.
I would like to hear from Ashok and others involved in this coalition, arguing as William McGrath and C-Suite argue and many who run pension funds which have chosen to keep going.
Lets have a good argument today about what we can do with give with our £1.2 trillion legacy of DB pensions. We may be doing better things with our pensions and their surpluses than line the trousers of American bankers.
