MIT's Investments Gain 10%, Beating Yale, Trailing Harvard
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s investments rose 10 percent in the past year, lagging behind Harvard University’s 11 percent gain and beating Yale University’s 8.9 percent return.
The endowment’s value rose 5.1 percent to $8.3 billion in the year ended June 30. That included $104 million in donor gifts and $460 million in distributions to the university, MIT said today in an e-mailed statement from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT’s fund, overseen by Seth Alexander, generated an average annual increase of 7.2 percent in the past five years through June. That compares with a 4.7 percent gain at Harvard, the richest U.S. school, and the 3.1 percent median return of public and corporate pensions, endowments and foundations tracked by Wilshire Associates Inc., a consulting firm in Santa Monica, California.
MIT’s portfolio is “primarily invested in equities and heavily weighted towards markets such as private equity, real estate and marketable alternatives,” the statement said. Patti Richards, a university spokeswoman, declined to comment on asset allocation or the performance of individual asset classes.
MIT’s endowment lost 17 percent in the year ended June 2009, after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008 crippled financial markets. Harvard and Yale’s investments dropped a record 25 and 27 percent respectively.
Ivy League Funds
Yale, whose endowment strategy is a model for U.S. schools, said Sept. 24 its fund increased to $16.7 billion as of June 30, trailing Harvard and the three other Ivy League funds that have reported returns for the past year. Results at Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut, were hampered by a second straight year of losses on real estate, timber and oil and gas holdings.
Harvard’s $27.4 billion endowment rose 11 percent. Columbia University in New York said its $6.5 billion endowment jumped 17 percent in the past year, while the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia reported its $5.7 billion fund gained 13 percent. The $3 billion fund at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, gained 10 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of stocks rose 12 percent in the year ended June 30.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gillian Wee in New York at gwee3@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at cbaumgaertel@bloomberg.net.
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