Asset management has become central to the development of the financial industry, both in the United States and Europe. The increasing number of cross-border merger and acquisition operations and the extremely high valuations that are put on those operations are evidence of the major financial establishments# desire to invest in a sector that they consider to be essential to their strategy of globalising and "financialising" their activities INDICE 1 Presentation of the portfolio management environment 2 The basic performance analysis concepts 3 The basic elements of modern portfolio theory 4 The Capital Asset Pricing Model and its application to performance measurement 5 Developments in the field of performance measurement 6 Multi-factor models and their application to performance measurement 7 Evaluating the investment management process and decomposing performance 8 Fixed income security investment