BOSTON Reuters - Harvard University, already the richest in the world, said on Thursday that its endowment made a 34% gain and swelled to $53.2 billion in the fiscal year ended in June.
Investments in private and public markets helped fuel the increase which university officials called outstanding year. A year later, Harvard reported a gain of 7.3% during the fiscal year that ended in June 2020, just months after markets tumbled amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The return trail firms that invest in other private companies investing in venture capital and hedge funds, the way Harvard invests.
The university's chief investment officer and chief executive of HMC had said that Harvard's gains would have been much higher had the school invested in riskier assets. He also cautioned that the endowedment won't produce these types of returns every year.
Narvekar took less risk in its portfolio than many of its peers over the last years, asserts Harvard in the annual financial report. Put another way, given the extraordinarily high performance of the overall markets this past year, a meaningfully higher level of portfolio risk would have increased HMC's returns dramatically, he said.
The Brown University endowment returned 56% in the year ended June 27.2 billion, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology increased 52% to $6.9 billion, the schools said.