Is Jeremy Hunt following in Gordon Brown’s footsteps?

Anyone fancy having a flutter with 5 per cent of their pension fund on unlisted start-ups? It is not necessarily a bad idea – it is only 5 per cent, after all. As part of a portfolio which is balanced by more bread and butter investments it need not be reckless. At best, you might just pick a future Microsoft or Google – and at worst, well, the other 95 per cent of your investments could smother your losses.

But it seems that we are not really going to have the choice – at least not those of us who have defined contribution pension funds. The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, used his Mansion House speech on Monday evening to announce what he calls the Mansion House Compact – an agreement between him and the operators of large pension funds to allocate more of their capital to unlisted companies. By 2030, he says, they have agreed to invest 5 per cent of their funds in this way.