Q121 Jim Sheridan: They are not exclusively for civil servants.
Mr Gieve: No.
Ms Aldred: There is no formal link between the two. The site is 75% commercial development and 25% social housing which is being passed to a housing association called Threshold. It, I assume, will be housing the people in accordance with its charitable aims.
Q122 Mr Bacon: Mr Jones, can you say why the index-lined bond market collapsed last summer?
Mr Jones: I cannot really comment on why that happened.
Q123 Mr Bacon: You cannot comment on why it collapsed.
Mr Jones: No. I think there was some linkage to some changes in the way pensions were calculated, but apart from that I would not really know.
Q124 Mr Bacon: Do you think the appetite of investors for index-linked bonds of this kind might have had something to do with it?
Mr Jones: If you are referring to some of the transactions-
Q125 Mr Bacon: I am thinking of the Derby Hospital one which has been restructured.
Mr Jones: There were various reasons why that happened. A large bond launch happened in the week before that occurred and therefore investors who were looking to invest in index-linked bonds would probably have already made their allocation. Hence their allocation for Derby would have been lower.
Q126 Mr Bacon: How important do you think the fact that investors had a lot of this stuff and were getting a bit sick of not being able to see through and assess the credit rating of the underlying transaction for themselves, the lack of transparency? People like Standard & Poor's were saying that was an issue.
Mr Jones: I can only really comment on the Home Office transaction.
Q127 Mr Bacon: I am talking about in general in the market.
Mr Jones: Sure, but in my experience of the Home Office transaction, we were part of the road show of investors which went out to discuss-
Q128 Mr Bacon: Yes, but this was an early one, was it not?
Mr Jones: In some ways the point you raise in terms of transparency is a valid one. Certainly in the brochures we did, we got a lot of pressure and a lot of comment from investors that they did want transparency. What we are seeing is that they are becoming a far more sophisticated bunch of people. They do understand it and they understand what the underlying quality of the projects are.
Q129 Mr Bacon: If you were trying to get a bond like this away now, you could not, could you?
Mr Jones: The quality of the product here, the way this project was structured, I see no reason why the Home Office transaction will go away today.
Q130 Mr Bacon: Even now? Last week they did a bank loan for the Middlesex Hospital, did they not?
Mr Jones: We did.