哈佛是好学校，却是差劲的投资者

哈佛拥有全美最多的大学捐款，但它的投资回报率却并不理想。

哈佛大学收到的社会捐款是美国所有学院或大学里最多的，截止到2015年6月底，这笔巨款的价值已达到327亿美元。但根据《财富》的分析，过去五年，哈佛大学的投资回报率却低于其他所有常青藤名校。

这个消息可能会让哈佛大学的员工和校友感到惊讶，因为他们经常被告知，这笔捐款在哈佛的投资运营机构哈佛大学投资管理公司的管理下，投资回报率总是超过基准水平。比如，该公司CEO简•门迪罗上月就在一封公开信中写道：

“这标志着哈佛大学投资管理公司的回报率连续第四年超过了Policy Portfolio基准。正如我们之前指出的那样，投资收益回报率要想超过代表市场的Policy Portfolio基准，并非是轻易就能实现的，也并非每年都能指望实现。”

但现实是，哈佛大学设定的这个门槛，只是保证其捐款基金的投资回报能适当地满足大学本身的财务需求，并不能用来评价哈佛大学投资管理公司相对其他知名大学（或相对于广域市场指数）的投资表现。

如果和其他知名大学相比，哈佛的投资成绩就相当惨不忍睹了。它的五年期年化回报率只有1.7%。要知道在同一时间段内，哈佛是美国25所捐赠收入最多的大学或学院中，唯一一所五年期年化回报率低于2%的大学，就连与它最接近的康奈尔大学也达到了2.2%。

另外，在投资咨询公司Wilshire Associates建立的一个数据库中，17所捐赠收入超过5亿美元的大学的五年期投资回报率中值为3.38%。据信，哈佛大学应该不包含在这个样本库中。难怪在门迪罗公开信里的“投资回报”表中缺少了一个特定的时间段。

Harvard has America’s largest college or university endowment, but not nearly its best.

Harvard University has the nation’s largest college or university endowment, valued at $32.7 billion through the end of June. It also has worse investment returns than any of its peers over the past five years, according to aFortune analysis.

This may come as a surprise to Harvard employees and alums, who have been told that the endowment’s investment arm — Harvard Management Company — regularly beats its benchmarks. For example, HMC CEO Jane Mendillo wrote the following last month in a public letter:

“This also marks the fourth consecutive year in which HMC’s return exceeded the Policy Portfolio benchmark. As we have noted previously, earning returns in excess of the markets as represented in the Policy Portfolio is not easily done and is not expected every year.”

But the reality is that such thresholds are pre-set as baselines for making sure that the endowment can adequately meet the university’s financial needs, rather than judgments on HMC’s performance relative to other large schools (or to broader market indices).

On that latter basis, Harvard has been a virtual trainwreck. Its five-year annualized performance is 1.7%. For context, Harvard is the only one of the 25 largest U.S. college or university endowments to have returned less than 2% over that time period, with the next closest being Cornell University at 2.2%.

Moreover, investment advisory firm Wilshire Associates reports a median five-year return of 3.38% for the 17 schools within its database that have endowments larger than $500 million.Harvard is not believed to be included in that sample.No wonder the “Investment Return” chart in Mendillo’s letter was missing a certain time period:

同样值得注意的是，这个五年周期开始时，也正是门迪罗就任哈佛大学投资管理公司CEO之时（门迪罗于2008年7月1日就任）。不过，他履新后没几个月，雷曼兄弟就破产倒闭了。此外，哈佛投资管理公司在2009财年获得的负27.3%回报率，也可以怪在前任CEO穆罕默德•伊尔•埃里安（现任太平洋投资管理公司CEO）的头上。

虽然如此，但其他大学的捐赠投资也一样经历了金融风暴的洗礼。此外，哈佛近期的投资回报也没什么值得大书特书的。它的三年期回报数据在我们这个组别中只能排到第20名，一年期回报率更是排在后半截。

好学生的辩解

一些知情人士就哈佛如此有失水准的投资成绩进行了一番辩解，理由有三：

1、规模越大，就越难以做得出众。

2、哈佛对美国国内上市证券的敞口要比很多其他大学小得多，而这些大学则幸运地赶上了最近这轮牛市。

3、哈佛大学拥有相当大的非流动资产，其中有些资产在金融危机期间被迫大幅折价售出，这几次折价贱卖也一直在拖五年收益率的后腿。

然而，这三条理由每条都很容易被驳斥。

第一，哈佛一直是全美获得捐款最多的大学，但它过去的投资业绩可以毫不费劲地超越兄弟院校。比如，截止2012年6月30日，它的20年期投资回报率位列第五位。

第二，不可否认，哈佛的排名因为其相对缺乏上市证券而有所下降。但有些学校的证券比重比它还小，但投资回报却要远远超过哈佛，比如耶鲁。另外，越来越多的大学在捐赠资金的投资上都采用了“耶鲁模式”来配置资金，这已经不是什么秘密了，这也说明就整体而言，美国大学捐赠基金持有上市证券的比例不升反降。

第三，过去五年里，哈佛实际上加大了对非流动资产的敞口，包括私募股权和房地产。所以说，目前的管理层不仅赞成二级销售（有可能太快了），同时可能也在为经济再次探底时或将出现的资金紧缩做准备。

不过，这些似乎都没有让哈佛投资管理公司的董事会感到担忧——至少在公开场合上。

哈佛大学投资管理公司的董事会成员，私募股权机构银湖公司联合创始人格兰•哈金斯表示：“我认为，门迪罗部署的团队会非常成功，我们回看这五年，会觉得她干得非常好。”

门迪罗未能接受此次采访。

哈佛如何在投资上打败耶鲁

据彭博社报道，哈佛大学正急于出台一套方案来解决投资回报的问题。哈佛的目标是要超过耶鲁大学，后者过去5年的平均投资回报率位居常青藤联盟之首。

哈佛大学坐拥376亿美元社会捐款，相比之下，耶鲁获得的捐款只有大约240亿美元。不过，耶鲁大学的捐款基金年均回报率高达14%，而哈佛则足足比低了4%。

彭博社还指出，从2014年到2015年6月，哈佛的单年回报率只有5.8%，低于常青藤联盟平均值2%。

2015年10月，彭博社曾报道称，华尔街金融大亨和哈佛商学院的校友们已经就此事专门举行了会议，探讨如何能在投资回报上超过耶鲁和普林斯顿等老牌竞争对手。

“让我感到宽慰的是，两边都有人参加，因此我觉得我们肯定能妥当地完成这个任务。”此次基金增长方案的起草人，哈佛大学投资管理公司CEO史蒂芬•布莱斯在接受彭博社采访时称。

在谈及哈佛最近为促进捐款投资回报而采取的措施时，布莱斯表示：“这是一个重要的变革时期。我们有了新的CEO、新的高管团队、新的战略和新的文化。”（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

审校：任文科

Equally notable is that the five-year period matches up exactly to when Mendillo took over as CEO, on July 1, 2008. To be sure, she inherited the portfolio just months before Lehman Brothers collapsed, and most of the fiscal 2009 return of negative 27.3% can be pinned on her predecessor Mohamed El-Erian (now CEO of PIMCO).

That said, other endowments also had to weather the financial crisis. Moreover, Harvard’s more recent returns also aren’t much to write home about. It’s three-year figure ranks 20th in our group, and its one-year return ia easily in the bottom half.

Excuses from this excellent student

Those close to the situation offer three defenses for Harvard’s sub-par performance:

The larger you are, the harder it is to outperform.

2. Harvard has much less exposure to domestic public equities than do many other endowments, which have been able to ride the recent bull run.

3. Harvard has a particularly large slug of illiquid assets, some of which it felt compelled to sell at deep discounts during the financial crisis. Those sales continue to be a drag on five-year returns.

Unfortunately, each of those arguments are easily countered.

First, Harvard has always been the nation’s largest endowment — but it had little trouble outperforming in the past. For example, through June 30, 2012 it ranked #5 over a 20-year period.

Second, it certainly is true that Harvard’s rank has slipped due to its relative dearth of public equities. But other schools with even smaller public equity allocations — such as Yale — have performed much better. Moreover, it is no secret that more and more endowments have been adopting the “Yale model” of allocation, which means that public equity holdings actually have been decreasing over time, not increasing, in the broader endowment world.

Third, Harvard has actually increased its target exposure to illiquid assets over the past five years, including in private equity and real estate. So not only did current management approve the secondary sale (arguably too soon), but it also may be setting itself up for a similar liquidity crunch were the economy to tank again.

None of this, however, seems to be worrying the HMC board of directors. Or at least not openly.

“I think that the team Jane has put in place is prepared to be very successful, and that we’ll look back in five years and think she’s done a terrific job,” says HMC director Glenn Hutchins, co-founder of private equity firm Silver Lake.

Mendillo was not made available for this story.

How Harvard Plans to Beat Yale at Investing

The university is scrambling to come up with a solution, especially as it aims to take on Yale, which has seen the largest average annual returns over the last five years, according to Bloomberg.

Harvard has a $37.6 billion endowment, including an average return rate nearly 4% off that of Yale, the top Ivy League university by average annual return with 14%. Yale’s endowment is approximately $24 billion.

Harvard’s 5.8% one-year gain up to June, for instance, was behind the Ivy League average by 2%, the publication added.

In October 2015, Bloomberg reported that Wall Street financiers and Harvard Business School alums gathered to discuss how to beat rivals, such as Yale and Princeton.

“It was kind of reassuring,” Stephen Blyth, who drafted a plan to grow the fund as CEO of the Harvard Management Co. in an interview with Bloomberg. “There were people on both sides so I felt we must have it about right.”

“It’s been a period of significant change,” said Blyth of recent management decisions in an attempt to boost the endowment. “This is a new CEO, this is a new executive team, this is a new strategy, this is a new culture.”