Xin Li
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2375-4275
Research title: The Downfall of UK Pensions, 1960-2000
Research summary
My research examines how British occupational pension funds transformed their investment strategies from the 1970s to the 2000s. Pensions serve a dual purpose: they are instruments of public welfare, providing retirement security, and simultaneously financial assets managed for returns in capital markets. This dissertation traces how private financial logic progressively displaced public welfare imperatives across five key episodes: the IMF crisis, the Wilson Committee, the 'Big Bang' deregulation, the Maxwell scandal, and the subsequent era of 'hyper-regulation'. Drawing on archival materials, this study combines industry-level analysis with firm-level case studies to show that the financialisation of pensions was not simply imposed by political reforms but actively shaped by the pension industry itself. The findings shed new light on the historical roots of recent pension crises, including the 2022 liability-driven investment crisis.
Supervisors
Conferences
European Business History Association (EBHA) Summer School, September 2026
Political Economy Futures Forum (PEFF) PGR Presentation, March 2026
Business History Annual Conference, March 2026:
https://thebhc.org/drupal10/web/node/100213
Economic History Society Annual Conference, March 2025
Business History Beyond Boundaries: The Fourth International Summer School, University of Glasgow & University of Tübingen, July 2024