The US investment bank Lehman Brothers has become the latest firm to look into the possibility of acquiring pensions schemes being offloaded by UK businesses due to rising liabilities.

Earlier this year Goldman Sachs, through its subsidiary Rothesay Life, made such a move, acquiring the pension scheme of the gaming operator Rank Group, while last year Citigroup took on the £200m retirement scheme of Thomson Regional Newspapers.

Now it has been reported that Lehman Brothers narrowly missed out to Pension Insurance Corporation for the purchase of Delta's pension scheme last month and, the head of the bank's European pensions advisory group Alan Rubenstein has signalled that it may look into future deals should they arise.

"Lehman Brothers is active in helping clients look at different ways of managing their pensions risks – including removing these from the balance sheet if entirely appropriate," he stated.

This comes soon after a report published by the pensions consultants Lane, Clark & Peacock revealed that UK companies offloaded around £4.1 billion during the six months to the end of March 2008, up from £600 million over the previous six-month period.