Harvard Endowment Loses About $8 Billion

[buzzy2]

If Larry Summers had not fired Jack Meyer, would Harvard have lost so much money?

 

[bidask]

i bet you a billion dollars that harvard endowment would be down more than 50% if it needed to convert all those private equity investments into cash right now.

 

[shortie]

just like the saying goes: harvard and its money are soon parted.



fools!

 

[drsteph]

Well, so much for free tuition for the under 60k set

 

[stock_trad3r]

Quote from ASusilovic:

Harvard University's endowment, showing how the financial crisis is shaking U.S. higher education, has suffered investment losses of 22% since then end of the school's fiscal year.

The Harvard endowment, the biggest of any university, stood at $36.9 billion as of June 30, meaning the loss amounts to about $8 billion, more than the entire endowments of most colleges. In a letter to the school's deans, Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust and Executive Vice President Edward Forst blamed "severe turmoil in the world's financial markets." (See Harvard's letter.)

The letter said the 22% loss understates the actual decline in the endowment because it doesn't reflect certain assets, including private equity and real estate, for which estimates of their drops weren't yet available.

Harvard officials said they were planning for a decline of 30% in value for the year. Harvard said the school's worst single-year investment loss was 12.2% in 1974, when the endowment stood at less than $1 billion and its funds contributed far less to the school's operations. Currently, income from the endowment funds 35% of Harvard's $3.5 billion budget.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122832139322576023.html

Turmoil everywhere...

8 billion isn't much out of 40 billion. Only 20%, which is in line with the market. These people are very smart.

 

[jem]

harvard is setting up its bailout request.