Pension funds, overeager in their zeal to earn for their shareholders, may end up harming themselves and the emerging markets they have become very active players. In its struggle to find decent returns, they are forcing into riskier areas such as new emerging markets.

The current low yield environment is not conducive for pension funds that are required to pay out retirement amounts at preset levels regardless of earnings. Many peg the annual returns at 8% to remain afloat and with benchmark yields on ten year US government debt around 2% and fifty year near 7%, the 8% target is very optimistic indeed.

So instead of remaining domestic, many pension funds are looking to emerging markets. These investments have returned double digit returns for investors for the last decade. Many industry experts such as Barclays identify China, Brazil and Turkey would be growing at 5.3% on the average, about five times greater than the developing world.