While most assets in investors’ portfolios have been hit by the credit crisis, sugar, along with other commodities, has delivered the magic ingredient – performance that is unrelated to other markets.

But few pension scheme investors will have taken advantage of the 23% rise in the price of sugar over the past year or the 24% advance in commodity prices, which might offset the lacklustre performance in the rest of their portfolios. Most were relying on the main asset classes; the fact that these have all fallen at the same time, along with most of the alternative asset classes, has raised a question about the use of diversification that will be one of the main themes at Financial News’ annual pensions conference, EuroPass, in a week’s time.