Harvard University endowment reports 'disappointing' 8.1% return

DESCRIBING the results as "disappointing", Harvard University reported on Tuesday that its US$37.1 billion endowment earned an 8.1 per cent return for its most recent fiscal year.

The endowment's new chief executive, NP Narvekar, said that the fund was in the middle of a major revamping and that problems in the endowment would "require time to overcome". That return significantly trails the mean one-year return of 12.7 per cent for more than 400 institutions tracked by Cambridge Associates, which manages money for many non-profit organisations. And while many of the nation's largest endowments have yet to report returns, this month, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology posted a 14.3 per cent return for its US$14.8 billion endowment.

The report, which covered the fiscal year that ended June 30, did not provide data on how each asset class in the portfolio had performed, as Harvard has done in the past. Mr Narvekar's statement said only that returns from public equity, private equity and direct real estate investments had been strong, while natural resources had a "challenging" year.