The last two years have been a testing time for institutional fund managers – but one of their ideas, dreamed up in 2005 to 2006 to encourage pension schemes to diversify more of their money away from equities, appears to have done better than many.

About £9bn (€10.3bn) of UK pension funds' money is under management in so-called "diversified growth" funds, and schemes' investment consultants report continuing interest. According to Lane Clark & Peacock, half of their manager searches last year were for DG funds.