Real Estate Rules Alternatives List as Hedge Funds Return 1.9%

“I am a musician, and the monkey is a businessman. He doesn’t tell me what to play, and I don’t tell him what to do with his money.”

David Bonderman, co-founder of private-equity firm TPG Capital, is doing his best French accent for the Beverly Hills crowd, parroting a blind organ grinder confronted by Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau character in the 1975 film “The Return of the Pink Panther.” The audience, gathered in April for the Milken Institute Global Conference, erupts in laughter. So does Leon Black, founder of Apollo Global Management LLC, who is seated next to Bonderman.