Irish pension fund trustees usually get to see the suits who manage their money about once a year, when the fund managers come in and explain why they did as well or as badly as they did over the year. A few questions are asked, but most trustees rarely get involved in the nitty-gritty of analysing asset allocations and investment decisions. They accept that once they hire a fund manager, he should be left to do his job - unless he makes an almighty mess of it.

But maybe trustees - even of the smaller funds - might look a bit more closely at how their money is being managed in the light of the ongoing Unilever/ Merrill Lynch circus currently winging its way through the High Court in London.

They might also look very closely at the decision by one of Britain's biggest such funds, the 72,000-member Boots pension fund, to sell its entire £1.7 billion sterling (€2.7 billion) worth of equities and put the lot into bonds.

To say the Boots statement caused an earthquake in pension fund circles - not to mention stockbroking - was no understatement. If other big pension funds were to follow the Boots example then it would pose fundamental questions about the way such funds, particularly defined-benefits schemes, are managed and also serious questions over the future of the equities side of the stock market, which depends on commissions from pension funds for a large chunk of its income.

The conventional wisdom is that equities always outperform bonds and that is why pension funds always had a hefty portion of equities in its portfolio. And that was the very reason that the NAPF - the British equivalent of the Irish Association of Pension Funds - jumped to the defence of equities and questioned whether the move by Boots would set a trend that other big funds would follow.

The view in the industry is that the Boots decision is driven by a view that, since most of the members of its fund are on defined benefits and since the fund is apparently well-funded, there is little to be gained by investing large amounts of money in volatile securities like equities.

A Boots spokesman was quoted this week as stating that the balance between risk and reward had been tilted by recent moves by the British government and the accounting profession.

In particular, the introduction of the FRS17 accounting standard means that companies must report their pension liabilities every year.

Volatile investments, such as equities, are less attractive in this situation because a deficit in any given year will have to be covered by the companies.

Nobody questions the axiom that equities will outperform any other class in the long-term. But actions such as that at Boots will inevitably mean that companies look more closely at the composition of their pension fund. Trustees should be watchful.