Dive Brief:
- The manager of Harvard University’s $32.7 billion endowment — the world’s largest university investment fund — will leave her position at the end of the year following investment performance that lagged the returns of other Ivy League endowments.
- Jane Mendillo served as president and chief executive of the Harvard Management Company since 2008 and also worked for Harvard Management in a previous 15-year stint.
- Mendillo had the task of righting the ship after the endowment lost billions of dollars in the financial crisis, thanks in part to aggressive and risky investments made by her predecessors.
Dive Insight:
The New York Times and the Boston Globe offer two different takes on Mendillo’s departure. The Times points out that for the five-year period ending June 30, 2013, Harvard’s endowment had an annualized return of 1.7%, the worst in the Ivy League. The Globe emphasizes that Mendillo arrived to an investment group in disarray, following three years of heavy turnover at the leadership level, with an aggressively invested portfolio that had no cash available and would lose 27.3% in her first year. The Globe quotes sources touting her tenure as a success, with the risky investments pared back and investment managers hired to oversee more of the portfolio directly. Also, according to the Globe, the endowment’s estimated average annual return for the last five years was between 11% and 12%.