Alternatives are becoming core

Alternatives are essential

As allocations grow, alternative investments play an increasingly critical role in portfolios. The need for an approach that is scalable, disciplined, integrated, technology-enabled, transparent and based on fiduciary partnership has never been greater.
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Championing a new era of alternatives

Growing demand and complexity in private markets calls for a new era of alternatives to overcome long-standing hurdles for investors. We are helping to evolve the industry to overcome those challenges and defining a new kind of partnership for our clients.

Private market investing in a time of turbulence

Listen to Jim Barry, BlackRock Alternatives Chief Investment Officer, discuss why the COVID-19 shock is underscoring the role that longer-dated investment opportunities and private markets can play in investor portfolios.

BlackRock is tomorrow’s alternatives platform

Our US$239 billion platform is designed to deliver outperformance with true partnership across a range of investment solutions in: real estate, infrastructure, private equity, credit, hedge funds and alternative solutions.

We continue to innovate, leveraging our technology, our scale and our fiduciary model to better serve our clients now and in the future. We have:

Access to the best opportunities
Access to the best opportunities
Our 330-plus alternative investors supplement their networks and know-how with best-in-class ideas from BlackRock’s other 2,000-plus investors around the world.
Greater transparency
Greater transparency
We use advanced technology to help build stronger portfolios – we monitor 3,000 risk factors daily on Aladdin and 45,000 private companies on eFront.
An integrated view
An integrated view
We provide you with a *whole portfolio view*so you have a deeper understanding of how alternatives impact the rest of your portfolio.
A new standard of alignment
A new standard of alignment
Our 1,000+ member professional staff works to understand investor needs– and deliver BlackRock’s best use of skill, scale and technology to help you achieve your goals.

Learn more about alternative investing at BlackRock

Investment strategies Latest insights Education BlackRock team
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Alternative investment strategies

Alternative solutions
The Alternative Solutions Group (ASG) is BlackRock’s multi-alternative portfolio management team, responsible for constructing outcome-oriented private market portfolios on behalf of our clients.
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Alternative solutions
Real assets
Real assets, such as real estate and infrastructure, represent one of the fastest growing segments within the broader alternatives environment.
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Real estate Real estate
Infrastructure Infrastructure
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BlackRock’s latest alterative investing insights

  • All
  • CREDIT
  • PRIVATE EQUITY
  • REAL ASSETS
  • REAL ESTATE
  • ALTERNATIVES
  • HEDGE FUNDS
  • INFRASTRUCTURE
  • REAL ESTATE

Mastering alternatives with the BlackRock Educational Academy (BEA)

BEA takes you through Alternatives and how you can better understand how to incorporate this asset class into your portfolio. You will also better undertand the different investment opportunities across Alternatives, including private markets, real assets, and credit.

Unlock the full BEA video library
BlackRock clients can now login to access the full trainings on-demand. We invite you to experience the full educational academy by logging into our secure online portal.
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Unlock the full BEA video library

Sessions now available on-demand

  • ALTERNATIVES

    Risk management in private markets

    David shares the private equity characteristics and the key risk considerations when allocating to private equity positions, risk associated in measuring performance as well as how benchmarking can provide additional data.
  • ALTERNATIVES

    Portfolio construction for private markets

    Vidy and Thiago discuss the key industry trends as it relates to supply and demand dynamics for private assets, a multi-alternative approach to portfolio construction, and how to create an outcome-oriented portfolio solution.
  • PRIVATE EQUITY

    Building private equity portfolios

    Chris Rock shares the private equity market review and outlook and the warning signs to watch for when investing in today’s private equity markets. You will learn the common investor challenges and the solutions to mitigate those barriers.
  • PRIVATE EQUITY

    Common private equity myths and drivers of performance

    Julia helps to separate fact from fiction as it relates to common PE beliefs and helps break down private equity return drivers and how it enables investors to more precisely understand performance drivers within their private equity investments.
  • ALTERNATIVES

    Hedge fund landscape and strategies overview

    Briana shares the growth of the hedge fund universe along with its increasing complexity. While the landscape has evolved there is an investment opportunity and benefits to incorporating hedge funds into investor portfolios.
  • ALTERNATIVES

    Manager sourcing, evaluation, and portfolio construction

    Nick and Jeff highlight best practices and pitfalls of manager sourcing and evaluation including sharing their disciplined investment approach founded on specific core principles
  • ALTERNATIVES

    Fixed income hedge funds and multi-strategy relative value

    Jack pulls back the curtain on the portfolio management team to share our investment process, how he looks at risk based on changing market conditions and opportunities, and also the critical partnership with the risk management team.
  • CREDIT

    The evolution of distressed investing

    Mark shares the foundations of distressed investing and the variety of strategies that investment managers employ to generate returns in distressed securities.
  • REAL ASSETS

    Global real estate market outlook

    Steven shares BlackRock’s real estate outlook by reviewing the current state of the global market and risks, megatrends that are intersecting the near-term outlook, the risks associated with searching for alpha.
  • REAL ASSETS

    Global real assets securities: real estate in liquid form

    Mark shares the benefits and disadvantages of investing in private versus public real estate and where are the trends and themes to help you make those investment decisions.
  • PRIVATE EQUITY

    New horizons in private equity

    Colm shares the confluence of factors that are driving the need for innovation in the PE space. He shares that navigating these factors require insights on Alpha and a focus on structure.
  • CREDIT

    Credit Investing markets

    James starts with defining credit and sharing where the opportunity as expanded. He shares examples of when successfully nvaigtaing the global credit markets can fit within an asset allocation framework as well as lead to alpha.

Meet our alternatives team

The BlackRock Alternative Investors (BAI) team of 990+ dedicated professionals partners with the firm’s multidisciplinary teams and leverages extensive company-wide resources in an effort to deliver consistent returns over the long term.

Key stats about BlackRock’s alternatives platform.

 

Source: BlackRock. All dollar figures are in US dollars. Number of professionals is as of September 30, 2019 and excludes contingent workers and interns. Client assets are as of September 30, 2019 and include committed capital. Client assets include currencies and commodities. Alternative credit is reported in BlackRock Alternatives. Leveraged finance is not included in the alternative client assets figure.

Leadership

Edwin N. Conway
Edwin N. Conway
Head of BlackRock Alternative Investors
Edwin N. Conway, is responsible for BlackRock’s alternatives strategy and the delivery of the firm’s alternatives investments to institutional clients.
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Jim Barry
Jim Barry
Chief Investment Officer, BlackRock Alternative Investors
Jim Barry, Managing Director, is the Chief Investment Officer of BlackRock Alternatives Investors (BAI) and Global Head of BlackRock Real Assets.
Read biography

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