Penn's Endowment Returns 6.5% in a Slowdown From Last Year
University of Pennsylvania's Endowment Returns 6.5% in 2019
(Bloomberg) -- The University of Pennsylvania endowment gained 6.5% in fiscal 2019, half of the Ivy League school’s performance last year.
The results come after Dartmouth and Massachusetts Institute of Technology also recently reported lower returns compared with the prior year. Penn’s endowment managed $14.7 billion as of June 30, the school said Thursday in a statement.
The largest college endowments have been moving into alternative assets such as hedge funds, which have been posting lackluster returns in recent years. In 2018, Penn had 29% of its capital in hedge funds, its largest allocation, followed by private equity and international equities. International stocks lost money in the year ended June 2019.
Peter Ammon, who formerly worked at Yale’s endowment under David Swensen, has been chief investment officer of Penn’s fund since 2013. Last year Penn’s performance ranked third among the eight Ivy League schools.
More universities will be reporting returns over the next month. A representative at Penn declined to comment about the performance.
| School | FY 2019 | FY 2018 |
| MIT | 8.80% | 13.50% |
| U California | 8.2 | 8.9 |
| Michigan State | 7.7 | 11.1 |
| Penn State | 7.7 | 7.8 |
| Dartmouth | 7.5 | 12.2 |
| NC State | 7.3 | 11.4 |
| U Oklahoma | 7.3 | 10 |
| U Pennsylvania | 6.5 | 12.9 |
Note: Fiscal year ends June 30
To contact the reporter on this story: Janet Lorin in New York at jlorin@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Mirabella at amirabella@bloomberg.net, Vincent Bielski
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