The latest survey of assets managed by alternative investment managers around the world from Towers Watson, published in conjunction with the Financial Times, shows that global alternative AUM reached $5.7 trillion (€4.2 trillion) last year. The survey covered seven asset classes and seven investor types.

The Global Alternatives Survey also found that, among the Top 100 alternative investment managers, real estate managers had the largest share of assets, at 31 percent and an AUM of more than $1 trillion (€745 billion).

Craig Baker, global CIO at Towers Watson, says: “For almost all of the past 11 years of this research, we have seen increasing allocations to alternative assets by a wide range