Columbia Management [profile] is making a big push in alternative investments.

In November the Boston-based Ameriprise subsidiary unveiled a "strategic initiative" with alternatives giant Blackstone, and last month Columbia unveiled the first fruit of that alliance: the Columbia Adaptive Alternatives Fund.

"We are seriously committed to establishing and broadening an alternative investment product line here at Columbia, in particular a liquid alternative product line," Bill Landes, PM and deputy head of global investment solutions at Columbia, tells MFWire. "We've always been a very strong equity and a very strong fixed income asset manager. Now we are making a statement that we are going to be just as serious about managing alternative investments."

And that means more products coming from the Blackstone alliance.

"This is the first fund out of that business partnership," Landes says. "There will be more."

The new fund is meant to be "an all-inclusive alternative investment portfolio," Landes explains, a portfolio that includes alternative beta, commodities, hedge funds, listed private equity, and REITs, all wrapped up in a single fund. Blackstone subadvises part of the fund, handling the hedge fund slice of the portfolio, while Columbia handles the rest of the pieces as well as the overall asset allocation amongst the different pieces.

Landes praises Blackstone as a "marquee name" in the alternatives space and says that there are "a number of avenues" Columbia and Blackstone might pursue next. 

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