The latest figures from Mercer Investment Consulting show that its fund manager recommendations have lost clients 0.1 percentage point relative to the markets.

The slightly negative return, for the last quarter of 2002, is the first in a long time for Mercer. The consultancy firm added 1.2 percentage points of value in 2002. Its best year since it started collating figures was in 1999, the height of the bull market, when fund managers that Mercer recommended to their clients beat benchmarks by five percentage points.