According to an article in the Telegraph, when Alfred Nobel bequeathed his fortune to peace prizes in 1895, he restricted investments to "safe securities" - but then, even he hadn't anticipated the latest financial crisis.
The Nobel Foundation announced Tuesday that it would increase its allocation to Hedge Funds in efforts to restore prize money after the cash amount for the prize was reduced for the first time since 1949. The foundation is dealing with a 20% reduction of assets since 2007, over the same period the allocation to equities has fallen 20% to 47% of capital. Lars Heikensten, head of the foundation said "If we can choose hedge funds that we trust, then we can get better returns for given risks". From December 2007 to December 2011 the allocation to Alternative Investments increased from 12% to 33%.
The Nobel Foundation decision further supports the Future Fund's decision to allocate 17.7% of assets to the Alternatives sector as of September 2012, a comparatively high allocation when compared to pension funds.
Read the entire Telegraph article here.
Or a similar article from Investment Europe here.
