It is good to be an oligarch.

To be an oligarch is to have resources galore. It’s an opportunity to control countries — such as Russia, the Ukraine or Saudi Arabia — and to dominate industries such as institutional real estate investing. Especially institutional real estate investing. The industry has always had its “bigs,” but the biggest of the bigs are accumulating assets under management with such speed and immensity that some observers are getting alarmed the industry is going topsy-turvy.

Consider that the 10 largest managers control 36 percent of total real estate investment dollars, or $682 billion, according to research conducted by Institutional Real Estate, Inc. (IREI) and Property Funds Research. To put that in perspective, the top 20 firms in this year’s survey collectively control m