Eighth, in 2008-09 equities and credit were borne on waves of liquidity flows, and ‘micro’ analysis of individual companies’ prospects seemed irrelevant, Eagleton said. “As the recovery matures it seems likely that investors will become more discriminating, and country, sector and stock-picking abilities may once more become pre-eminent.”

Ninth, the GFC created significant pressure on super funds whose heavy reliance on unlisted assets created a liquidity mismatch between their obligation to meet members’ switching or rollover requests and the ability to realise assets for cash at short notice. “We expect such funds to reduce their strategic allocations to illiquid assets in the future,” Eagleton said.

And finally, the key lesson would be genuine diversification of underlying return sources through properly identifying the risks involved, and to spread portfolios across as many lowly correlated assets as possible. Eagleton tipped insurance-linked investments such as catastrophe bonds, aircraft leasing investments, agricultural investments and social infrastructure. “We also see further interest in non-traditional equity strategies such as low-volatility products and structured strategies that use derivatives to limit extreme downside risk,” he added.