"When you're finished changing, you're finished". So, said Benjamin Franklin. Financial markets have certainly taken that dictum to heart. It is only 30 years since the first financial futures and options contracts were admitted to trading in Chicago.

Since then the flow of financial innovation has been unceasing. Europe has been in the cockpit of this financial innovation. We have seen the emergence of new asset classes. Financial derivatives have been followed by credit derivatives and asset backed securities, and structured products. The ground-rules of fund management are being rewritten: long-only stock-pickers have lost ground to passive strategies and structured funds. The torrent of financial invention is not about to dry up.