The untimely death early this year of Alastair Ross Goobey, former head of Hermes Pensions Management, robbed the equity market of one of its greatest cheerleaders at times of despair. But one of his successors Mark Anson, who quit Hermes in April, to become director of investment services at Chicago-based Nuveen Investments, has stepped into his shoes.

Writing in US trade journal Pensions & Investments, he said shares have become excessively cheap: "By my own estimate the equity risk premium for US stocks is now above 6% compared with the long-term equity risk premium - that is the premium for stocks over US Treasury bonds - of about 3.9%."