bonds

Sainsbury is adopting a riskier investment strategy in equities for its £3.3bn final salary pension scheme to try and cut its contribution requirements by around £30m a year, says the Daily Telegraph .

Interest in fixed income markets could soar with further development of "synthetic" bonds using derivatives to offer better yields than "real" bonds.

A study of asset allocation by 360 UK pension schemes with assets totalling £112bn has found 20% are putting all new contributions into bonds alone, says consultant Mercer.

This year's investment story will be equities mixed with bonds because people will be more interested in avoiding losses than taking on risk to back winners, says Phil Wagstaff, managing director UK retail M&G.