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Harvard Endowment Trails Peers With 34% Return; Yale Gains 40%

Harvard Endowment Trails Peers With 34% Return on Lower Risk

Harvard University reported returns that lagged behind its peers in the latest fiscal year, results the richest U.S. college attributed to taking less risk.
 
The school’s endowment returned 34% through the end of June, Harvard said Thursday. That trails almost all the major universities that have reported results, many of whom credited stock holdings and venture capital investments for their success.

“Given the extraordinarily strong performance of the overall market this past year, a meaningfully higher level of portfolio risk would have increased Harvard Management Company’s returns dramatically,” N.P. “Narv” Narvekar, HMC’s chief executive officer, said in the statement.  

Harvard’s risk profile “might well be different from that of other university endowments,” he said. “We believe that Harvard’s financial future is very well served by this process.”
 
Harvard’s endowment still added $11 billion over the 12 months, and the fund’s value hit a record $53 billion. In fiscal year 2020, only about a dozen colleges in the country had assets of $11 billion or more. 

Yale University, the second-richest U.S. private college, reported on Thursday that its endowment returned 40% in the last fiscal year. The value of the fund reached $42.3 billion, according to a statement.

Universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt, and Washington University in St. Louis all reported returns of more than 55% for the year ended June. Among Harvard’s Ivy League rivals, Brown saw a 52% gain and Dartmouth reported a 47% return. The S&P 500 was up 38% over the period. 

Harvard Endowment Trails Peers With 34% Return; Yale Gains 40%

“While reducing public equities proved to be painful in financial year 2021, we needed to do so in order to remain within our portfolio risk budget,” said Narvekar, who joined Harvard in December 2016.

Private equity, which comprises more than one-third of the portfolio, delivered a 77% gain. Stocks were up 50%, while hedge fund returns were just 16%. HMC has been reducing its stock holdings, which now comprise about one-seventh of its holdings.

Narvekar noted the success that other investors have had with venture capital, and pointed to moves his fund made that he said will pay off in the future. 

“Our recent venture investments could take about a decade to bear fruit,” he said. 

The endowment distributed more than $2 billion toward the university’s operating budget, which represents more than one-third of annual revenue. Harvard ended the year with an operating surplus of $283 million.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.