Global financial markets face a permanent shift in power from traditional money managers to opaque groups such as petro-dollar investors, Asian central banks, hedge funds and private equity groups, according to a study out Thursday.

These power brokers had amassed $8,400bn in assets by the end of 2006, three times what they held in 2000 when they were “little more than fringe players” in the capital markets, says the report, published by McKinsey Global Institute.