Alternative Assets and Strategic Allocation: Rethinking the Institutional Approach

CHAPTER 22

Filling Out the Allocation

The expression “There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip” dates to a time when the cups in use made “slips” both frequent and voluminous. In classical Greece, wine was drunk from kylikes, shallow footed goblets that could be as broad as dinner plates. Drinking from these cannot have been easy at the best of times, and although the ancients diluted their wine, sometime after the third or fourth round, unintentional wine baths must have been fairly common, particularly because they drank lying half-prone on couches. Implementation of allocation decisions is never easy, but the inclusion of alternative investments in an institution’s investable universe both magnifies and multiplies the problems that can arise. ...