Thirty years ago, the idea of a globe-straddling, $2 trillion asset management giant would have seemed fanciful. The investment industry was far smaller and more parochial, and big pension schemes and insurance portfolios were largely managed by in-house teams.

However, the way they were invested did not differ hugely. David Somers, an investment adviser at AllenbridgeEpic, said: "When I was at the ICI Pension fund in the 1970s, virtually straight out of university, things were the same, only different. We managed it on an absolute return basis, though we didn't call it that - we had an inflation-plus target. And we were using swaps to hedge risks back in the 1970s.