Bernard Madoff, subprime lenders, crumbling Wall Street banks and Enron fraudsters have given investors more than one reason to think twice before they part with their money. Today, trust is not something investment managers can afford to take for granted.

Real estate investing used to be so easy. You could buy property anywhere in the world, leverage it, then sit back and watch its value increase. The terms of the loans didn’t matter because property values were going to keep going up, forever and ever. You could always refinance.

But then one day, the strategy that had been working so well — getting out of bed in the morning — failed to produce the expected double-digit returns. Suddenly nobody could refinance anything. For both investors and plan sponsors, life became a lot less fun than it used to be.

HIGH ANXIETY

“Clearly, fear rules the day right now,” says Chuck Carpenter, managing director of private