It has been a year since Boots shocked the financial world by announcing its £2.3bn pension scheme – one of the UK’s 50 largest, with 72,000 members – had quietly sold all its equities and moved all its assets into long-dated AAA/Aaa sterling bonds. (See The Treasurer, December 2001). The Financial Times described it as the “most significant event of 2001” and The Wall Street Journal Europe as “simple, but revolutionary”.
