While banks in the UK could end up escaping lightly from plans to break them up, asset managers could be the unwitting losers in the UK's new coalition government’s plans to reform public sector pensions, with hints that the deficit-stricken system could be curbed, leaving fewer available funds to invest.

While Prime Minister David Cameron had been accused for some time of trying to bankrupt retired school teachers and town hall clerks, it was actually Liberal Democrat leader and deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg who brought up the subject of public sector pensions, quite unprompted, during televised leader debated last month.