Professor Philip Lane:

That is interesting because there was an element of that in setting up the NPRF but the logic of that was more long term. It was to deal with the increase in pension commitments that we will face after 2025. In line with that long-term goal, the portfolio was extremely equity focused. It was not liquid and we had to sell so much of these equities at the bottom of the market. The fact that our crisis happened at the same time as the global financial crisis meant we had to liquidate a lot of the assets in the fund to recapitalise the banks. If we look back at what happened to those equity shares since then it was very badly timed.