The firm surveyed 146 institutions with aggregate assets of CHF210bn in their ninth annual Swiss Institutional Survey. The institutions said they had suffered little or no damage from the sub-prime liquidity crisis which has damaged investment banks so badly.

The expected return from hedge fund investments averaged out at 5.8%, although higher returns were achieved from investments in commodities (6%) and private equity (7.8%).

However, these essentially conservative institutions, many of them pension funds, allocated only 6% to alternative investments in total, complaining about high costs and lack of transparency.