Managers who specialise in running diversified growth funds, a type of multi-asset product popular in the UK, are struggling to prove they have the skills to pick between other fund managers and asset classes, new research suggests.

Buck Consultants, the mid-sized investment consultancy owned by Xerox, analysed 40 institutionally focused DGFs and discovered that, by the managers' own admission, as a group they had failed to add any value from manager selection.