Pension funds carry some of the blame for the current financial crisis because of a serious failure in corporate governance, according to public opinion.

The Financial Times/Harris Poll has found that 60 per cent of the public selected stock holders have 'complete' responsibility or 'a lot of' responsibility for today's global financial crisis, resulting in them having a worse image than estate agents.

Defending pension schemes in light of the survey, Lindsay Tomlinson, vice-chairman of Barclays Global Investors in Europe, said that everybody had to carry some responsibility for the financial crisis and that pension funds were in fact way down on the list of who to blame.

Speaking at the National Association of Pension Fund's (NAPF) Investment Conference 2009 in Edinburgh, Tomlinson said that calculating how culpable schemes were for the downturn is crucial, as there will be "a raft of legislation and regulation arising and we need to make sure that the right issues are addressed".

Tomlinson pointed out that a major feature of the crisis has been a serious failure in corporate governance. Institutional investors had the power to address corporate governance, but they did not intervene with Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley and RBS, for example.

In Tomlinson's opinion, the country has lived through a recent "a rip-roaring credit bubble" meaning that the population has "been living well beyond (its) means for years".

However, there is no need for pension funds to be defensive, he says. Trustees must "acknowledge that corporate governance is an issue in the widest possible sense".

- Pensions Age March 2009

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