The Greek Tragedy that is LDI played out this week in front of the Lords’ industry and regulators committee, co-starring the pair of knights at the top of Legal & General, chairman John Kingman and CEO Nigel Wilson. Alas, the victims of the tragedy were not invited to be present, although their time may come.
LDI, you ask? Oh, come on, do keep up with the acronyms. Liability-Driven Investment is the alchemy that allows pension funds to juice up their returns from “risk-free” investments by buying a derivative. In the most extreme cases, LDIs allowed exposure of £7 to UK government stocks for every pound of derivative.
