Dive Brief:
- Harvard University has promoted one of its portfolio managers, Stephen Blyth, to take the helm of the world’s largest university endowment.
- Blyth, hired by the endowment in 2006, will take over for Jane Mendillo on Jan. 1. He is currently head of public markets, which accounts for 40% of the $36 billion endowment, formally called Harvard Management Co.
- Blyth’s promotion is a sign that Harvard will still favor an investment strategy that relies on hedge funds and private equity, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Dive Insight:
Blyth’s unofficial directive: Beat Yale. Yale University’s endowment had a 20.2% return for fiscal 2014, while Harvard’s return was 15.4%. In the 2009 fiscal year, during the financial crisis, Harvard lost 27%, and it wasn’t until this year that the endowment had recovered and come close to its peak value again — $36.9 billion, set in June 2008. The endowment’s earnings pay for more than a third of Harvard’s operating budget. Blyth was hired after a national search to replace Mendillo, who resigned. He has a doctorate in statistics from Harvard, taught statistics at the university, and was formerly head of a fixed-income trading group for Deutsche Bank.
