For the second time in a little more than two years, Harvard University has named a new person to oversee its mammoth endowment fund.
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On Thursday, the university announced that Jane L. Mendillo, the chief investment officer at Wellesley College, would become president and CEO of the Harvard Management Company. She takes over July 1.
The management company has responsibility for the Harvard endowment. It was valued last June at $34.9 million, making it the nation’s largest college or university endowment.
Yale University, Mendillo’s undergraduate and graduate alma mater, was second with an endowment of $22.5 billion.
Before going to Wellesley in 2002, Mendillo, 49, had worked at Harvard Management for 15 years. At the time of her departure, she was managing $7 billion in assets.
She suggested to The New York Times that her second stay at Harvard would be lengthy.
“My intent is to stay at Harvard for a very long time and take a long-term view of the portfolio,” Mendillo said.
She takes over a spot Mohamed A. El-Erian left vacant at the end of 2007.
El-Erian had come to Harvard Management in 2005 from an executive position at Pacific Investment Management Company (Pimco). In leaving Harvard, he went back to Pimco, where he’s co-chief executive officer and co-chief investment officer.
In announcing his departure, El-Eran said he was “returning to southern California to be closer to … family.”
Before El-Erian, Harvard Management was run for 15 years by Jack R. Meyer. He was a rock star of sorts in the quiet world of endowment management.
The Harvard endowment was $4.7 billion when he arrived in 1990. It was $22.6 billion when he left in 2005 to start Convexity Capital, a hedge fund.
Meyer’s time at Harvard was controversial. He ran the portfolio as if it were a hedge fund, and he paid his managers accordingly.
In the year ending in June 2004, one of his managers made $36.8 million. Another made $35.6 million.
Meyer received $6.9 million. That was at least five times the amount paid David Swenson, his counterpart at Yale, where the portfolio outpaced Harvard’s in earnings.
Meyer’s bottom-line success made him a hard act to follow. When El-Erian took over, Paul Kedrosky, who writes the Infectious Greed blog, launched a “death watch,” giving El-Erian 18 months on the job, which proved prophetic.
Kedrosky initiated a Jane Mendillo death watch Friday. He gives her 18 months, as well.
During her time at Wellesley, Mendillo has seen the portfolio from $1 billion to $1.65 billion, as of last June.
According to the Times, she earned $607,874 for the year ending 2006. Her pay package at Harvard Management has not been disclosed.
El-Erian earned $6.5 million at Harvard for the year ending June 2007.
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