Princeton Discloses $6.3 Million Compensation for Golden
Princeton Endowment Chief Golden Was Paid $6.3 Million in 2018
(Bloomberg) -- Princeton University reported $6.3 million of compensation for endowment chief Andy Golden in 2018, of which about one-third was a payout of deferred money earned in prior years.
Golden received a $955,000 base salary and $2.4 million of retirement and other compensation, according to Princeton’s annual filing with the Internal Revenue Service.
He also received $2.8 million of bonus and incentive pay. Most of that -- $1.95 million -- consisted of money he’d earned in prior years but that was withheld until 2018.
His total figure for 2018 is the highest for any official at the Ivy League university.
Princeton’s endowment gained 14.2% in fiscal 2018, the best return among eight Ivy League schools. Golden, who was hired in 1995 and previously worked at Yale University’s investment office, oversees a team of 25 people managing about $26 billion. The group has delivered an annualized gain of 11.6% in the decade through June 2019.
Excluding the $1.95 million from earlier tax filings, Golden’s compensation would be $4.3 million, a spokesman for the university said.
Harvard University said last week N.P. “Narv” Narvekar, its endowment chief, collected $8.6 million in 2018, making him the school’s highest-paid official. Cornell University’s chief investment officer Ken Miranda got almost $1.9 million two years ago, while Brown University’s top endowment official Joseph Dowling got $1.3 million.
Top investment executives of major endowments often receive the bulk of their compensation from an annual bonus program. Payouts are usually based on how the endowment’s investments perform relative to benchmark indexes for each asset class.
Many endowments defer part of the annual bonus for a few years. The value of the withheld portion tends to move in tandem with the endowment’s overall returns or losses. As a result, compensation figures reported in tax filings may reflect partial payouts of bonuses earned in prior years, based on performance from years back.
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