Managers say buyouts will be strategy of choice - EXCLUSIVE

An exclusive survey by Professional Pensions showed that 68pc of scheme managers believed these sort of strategies would become mainstream, 11pc said they would not and 21pc were unsure.

These comments come after both Legal & General and Pension Corporation predicted the buyout market would hit £10bn this year.

Last week, L&G said the spate of deal making in the last quarter of 2007 and early 2008 showed no sign of abating (PP Online, June 24)

Legal & General managing director of annuities Simon Gadd said: "The buyout market has never been busier, there’s probably £20bn worth of buyouts by value being tendered for at the moment."

He added that he did not expect all of those deals to complete this year but saw no reason why the market should not hit the £10bn mark.

Pension Corporation director Steven Lowe also predicted that transfers would top £10bn in 2008 last month (PP, June 19).

Lowe attributed the increase in the number of bulk annuity transfers to proposed regulatory and legislative changes, increased competition between insurers, investment market volatility and pressure on the time of senior management of companies.