The crisis is likely to accelerate pension trends already at work. This further market shock highlighting the riskiness of company pension provision, and of equity investment, will probably accelerate the closure of existing DB schemes and encourage closer matching of assets with liabilities...

In his Berkshire Hathaway annual newsletter to investors c.20 years ago, Warren Buffett while discussing the Long Term Capital Management LTCM and Enron collapses, famously called derivatives: "financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially...