For euro zone investors, the start of trading in the new currency on January 4 will open up the widest choice ever of domestically priced assets, and managers will be able to diversify without currency risk. But pension fund managers expect no stampede to join in, pointing out that some re-positioning of investors' European assets has already occurred in anticipation of the euro's launch. "The euro is a process, it is not an event," said Guy Stern, chief investment officer, Oppenheim KAG, playing down the idea of a rush into trading when the market re-opens on Monday.

"The euro zone has been established for quite a while now and our clients and our strategic allocations over the past year have been gradually changed from a purely domestic to a new definition of domestic," hesaid. For many this means new benchmarks and new portfolios. "Our clients have said `the domestic market is no longer Germany; the domestic market is now Euroland'," Stern said. The capitalisation of the major European stock markets, including non euro signatories Britain, Switzerland and Sweden, is around $6 trillion.