How weapons of mass destruction saved a pension scheme

In 2005 the pinnacle of the Common Motors pension scheme hit out on the new vogue for “liability-driven investing”.

Inspired by the dotcom crash and new accounting and tax guidelines, pension schemes have been overhauling their portfolios. Now not would they attempt to generate an honest return from shares. As a substitute, they’d be laser-focused on matching investments with their obligations to future retirees, which implied shopping for primarily long-dated authorities securities.

“I wrestle to know why locking within the lowest doable price of return is a good suggestion,” GM’s Allen Reed advised Institutional Investor. He preferred shares, hedge funds and personal fairness that introduced extra danger however promised larger returns.

Now that LDI has blown up within the UK, prompting gilt yields to surge, an intervention from the Financial institution of England and a fireplace sale of belongings to fund souring swaps, different critics have emerged. They embrace Subsequent boss Lord Simon Wolfson, who described the technique as a “time bomb”, and Fundsmith founder Terry Smith, who mentioned it was “an explosive combination of inappropriate accounting and a misguided funding technique”.

However that isn’t the complete story. Concurrently GM was rubbishing LDI, UK retailer WHSmith went all-in. The fund fired the managers who have been closely obese equities and employed Goldman Sachs.

Like many firms, WHSmith was incentivised to maneuver to LDI as a result of accounting guidelines had begun forcing it to recognise risky pension liabilities on its steadiness sheet.

One downside. “As a result of we have been so underfunded we couldn’t presumably afford to purchase sufficient gilts with the intention to obtain the funding stability that we wished,” remembers Jeremy Stone, chair of the pension trustees.

Goldman as a substitute introduced out the best derivatives obtainable to humanity. This shiny new portfolio was 94 per cent “invested in inflation and rate of interest hedged investments” and 6 per cent in fairness name choices.

“This was a helpful expertise,” says Stone. “We had an immense danger . . . in that [the fund] was in substantial deficit and likewise wildly mismatched as a result of it had a really equity-heavy portfolio. Coming over the horizon was the probability that very giant quantities of cash must be put in.” And it was unclear that the information chain may afford it.

There have been a bunch of complexities alongside the best way. The fund needed to maintain money to have the ability to pay collateral on swings in worth of its derivatives. In 2008, it was not solely worrying for the primary time concerning the solvency of its counterparty Goldman but additionally, says Stone, “we found that money in money funds isn’t essentially money”. The “money” was in “monoline-enhanced asset-backed bonds”, which have been shaken by the disaster and generated a short lived lack of greater than £100mn, says Stone.

It later incurred one other momentary £100mn hit when the “repo” or repurchase market, the place securities are exchanged for money on short-term loans, froze up.

However the technique labored. In August this yr, the WHSmith pension fund was bought to Normal Life in a £1bn bulk buy annuity deal. The retirement earnings of the members is now assured.

The WHSmith fund had individuals who knew what they have been doing comparable to Stone, a banker with Rothschild and Lazard. Funds which were stricken within the present disaster are often trapped in pooled LDI investments the place they’ve much less management and infrequently much less understanding of the methods.

In the meantime, in GM’s case, the technique mattered little in 2009 when the carmaker collapsed; the US authorities bailed out the pensions.

tom.braithwaite@ft.com