How's the Endowment Doing?

Colleges & Universities Wesleyan University
8

<p>Wesleyan is the third major LAC to report their endowment returns for this fiscal year. Bowdoin and Dartmouth weighed in at 19% (22% total return) and 13% (18.4% total return) respectively. </p>

<p>Wesleyan’s new CIO, was only in office less than a year so. Add the fact that she is a protege of Yale’s David Swensen, at a time when private equity was a dirty word, and you’d have to have been an eternal optimist to expect her to knock one out of the ballpark so soon. But, the latest Financial Statement which covers the period ending, June 30, 2011, suggests otherwise:</p>

<p>1) A 17% increase in endowment market value (from $513 million to $601 million)
2) A 20% total return on investment (gross increase in market value prior to application to operating expenses)
3) A 5.5% draw from the endowment for university operating expenses (based on a moving 12 quarter average.)
4) No increase in debt.
5) An actual increase in the value of so-called Level Three investments (whether this is due to positive returns on liquidations or to increased allocations – or, both – is hard to tell)
<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/finance/financeDept/reporting/Annual%20Financial%20Reports/2010-2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/finance/financeDept/reporting/Annual%20Financial%20Reports/2010-2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For more information on Wesleyan’s new CIO, here is an article published shortly after she took the helm:
<a href=“http://www.ai-cio.com/channel/ASSET_ALLOCATION/Interrogation__Anne_Martin_Thinks_Liquidity_Is_Key.html[/url]”>http://www.ai-cio.com/channel/ASSET_ALLOCATION/Interrogation__Anne_Martin_Thinks_Liquidity_Is_Key.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;