Harvard Endowment Trails Peers With 34% Return; Yale Gains 40%
- University endowment gains $11 billion to record $53 billion
- Private equity was the best performer, with a 77% gain
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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.