While it took years for the sellside and buyside to grapple with pan-European sectoral research, the leap to a global product seems to be happening almost overnight. Globalisation, multinational mergers and overall consolidation in their own circles means that fund managers no longer want to view their investment worlds only through a regional prism, but via a world-wide spectrum.

Producing the weighty global tomes is not an easy task. Fund managers know a cut-and-paste job when they see it and they are demanding truly integrated reports, full of facts and figures that create a unified view of an industry. Communication and co-ordination are paramount, but investment houses also must have scale and global reach.