An agreement among 17 of the United Kingdom’s largest workplace pension providers to boost investment in the U.K. could inadvertently create a cartel, McGuireWoods London partner Matthew Hall warned in a May 14, 2025, commentary in The Times.
Under the Mansion House Accord, pension providers voluntarily pledge to invest 10% of their workplace portfolios in unlisted assets such as infrastructure, property and private equity by 2030. Half of that will be safeguarded for British assets.
Hall noted the accord’s signatories are competitors, and their plans for allocating their assets are commercially sensitive information. Under U.K. law, competitors shouldn’t coordinate their behavior or exchange such information if it could affect competition between them.
The accord is endorsed by the government and coordinated by the lord mayor of the city of London, but it remains voluntary and doesn’t override the companies’ obligation to obey the law, Hall cautioned.
“All involved in the accord should consider the application of competition law,” Hall wrote. “Pension providers cannot share commercially sensitive information and should take independent decisions. The government should recognise that if co-ordination among competitors is desired then it needs to legislate and not lean on companies to do this.”