It was actually funny to read the comments in the FT from people who work in the sector...everyone was doing it, this was a perfectly sound strategy, you have to hedge (the irony of losing £60bn in four days from hedging apparently not correlated to whether the hedges worked)...there was a guy who is CEO of a clothing company who actually wrote to the BoE about these strategies, the response was not just anger that he was right, it was rage (it also didn't help that this CEO was a big supporter of leaving the EU).

Either way, this is something that has been warned about since QE started, the BoE repeatedly denied this was an issue, it was obvious, multiple books have mentioned this, I have heard it a million times from market participants, I talked about this with other people...and the BoE are trying to shift the blame feverishly.

The chances that this doesn't happen in other countries is close to zero. The buildup in risk due to QE has been massive, and DB pension funds are patient zero.