Looking for alternatives

With equity and fixed-income markets offering scant rewards, Japanese investors have been looking at alternative investments to boost returns, writes Saima Farooqi

After a decade of virtually non-stop recession, Japanese institutional investors are used to low yields and negligible returns. But with the country’s stock index continuing its slide and short-term interest rates barely hovering above zero, the inclination to turn to alternative investments has become more pronounced. And with hedge funds generally outperforming traditional Japanese investments, even after a poor year for the hedge fund industry as a whole, a growing number of