UK Pensions Still Dumping Assets Before BOE Pulls Support

Pension funds are selling billions of pounds worth of assets to rebuild their cash buffers before the Bank of England removes critical market support next week that it introduced to prevent the collapse of the UK’s government bond market.

Individual pension funds are each selling tens or hundreds of millions of pounds of liquid assets to boost their reserves, according to pension consultants with knowledge of the transactions, who asked not to be identified discussing their clients. Asset sales across the industry have climbed into the tens of billions of pounds, according to Nikesh Patel, head of client solutions at Van Lanschot Kempen, a wealth management firm.