Nick White, international head of alternatives, said equity allocations had fallen from between 40 per cent and 80 per cent to nearer 25 per cent to 50 per cent during the past five years.

Weightings in hedge funds, private equity and real estate vehicles had risen from between 5 per cent and 15 per cent to between 18 per cent and 55 per cent. These weightings relate to mandates where clients have given JP Morgan discretion to act.

The focus on the supposed merits of alternative investments such as private equity, hedge funds, infrastructure and commodities has intensified in recent years. In the early part of the present decade, hedge funds, for example, attracted attention by their ability to eke out returns while global equity markets crashed after the end of the dotcom stock market bubble.

In the US, the endowment funds of universities such as Yale and Harvard have been enthusiastic investors in such assets, while large pension schemes in the Netherlands, for example, have embraced such assets to ensure they have sufficient money to pay for an ageing population.