Twenty-one years ago, John Ralfe, then in charge of the £2.3bn Boots pension scheme, took the momentous decision to sell all the fund’s £1bn of equities and invest solely in UK government bonds.
The advantages, he later explained, were that in doing so, he matched the assets of the fully funded defined-benefit scheme to its liabilities, reducing the risk for Boots’ management and shareholders of a future deficit that the company would have to make up. It also reduced the risk for the 72,000 members, lowered investment