Kohlberg Kravis Roberts had introduced to individual investors an open-end mutual fund and now, one of the United States' biggest private equity firm, Blackstone is doing it too.

Blackstone announced its first ever mutual fund with daily liquidity to attract individual investors. Blackstone is an investment firm worth more than US$200 billion, its historic beginnings are in private equity. They have named their fund Blackstone Alternative Multi-Manager and it will make investments in alternative strategies. The fund will assign assets between a selection of investment sub-advisers such as hedge funds.

KKR was the first private equity company to start an open end mutual fund early this year.

"The implications for alternative asset managers are staggering because the bulk of all their money has historically come from pensions that are now going away. Over the next five to ten years individual investors are going to be a very important source of capital for alternative asset managers, and you'll see them rethinking their business models," a Harvard Business School faculty member said to media.