Endowment Performance Update

In October, we shared an early look at FY24 endowment performance. This week, we’re sharing an update with new data we’ve gathered over the past few weeks. Michigan State remains the top-ranked school for FY24, with a 15.1% return. We explored what drove that return in our newsletter a few weeks ago – check it out if you missed it! Bowdoin, Brown, and MIT are the top-performing endowments over the past 10 years:

Performance is just one of the many data points that OWL gathers for leading allocators, including endowments. Our platform now features several thousand profiles of endowments, foundations, pensions, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, OCIOs, and fund of funds. These profiles include details on each allocator’s location, size, and, in many cases, the managers they invest in.

The disclosures around manager investments can be hard to find and even more difficult to understand. We’ve spent years digging through obscure filings and building technology to create the most comprehensive database of allocator holdings.

One of the managers that often shows up in allocator filings is Hillhouse, who was the subject of a WSJ article over the weekend. The article notes several well-known allocators that have invested with Hillhouse, including Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and the Ford Foundation.

The article noted that Hillhouse’s name did not appear in one particular section of a Yale disclosure for 06/30/2023, implying that perhaps the school had redeemed. Using data in OWL from various disclosures, we can confirm that Yale was still invested in Hillhouse as of 6/30/2023. While the position on that date was worth over $500 million, it did reflect a meaningful decrease from a year prior.

OWL users can see all of these details and more on our platform – for example, our database shows an additional 40 allocators that have publicly disclosed investments with Hillhouse, including MIT, Boston Children’s Hospital, Mayo Clinic, and the Grantham Foundation. Reach out if you’d like to learn more about our allocator and manager data!

Other News & Events

• Podcast on the role of AI in investment management, featuring Dave Morehead, Baylor CIO

• Podcast with John Hempton of Bronte Capital on investing in uncertain times

• Institutional Investor article on expected growth in OCIOs

• NYC Pension announced that 13% of its assets are invested with minority- and women-owned funds

• Investure is hiring an Associate for Manager Selection (Public Portfolio)

• University of Minnesota is hiring an Investment Director

• Unum Group is hiring a CIO

About Old Well Labs

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

Disclaimers

Returns represent the return on invested capital of publicly disclosed long positions, as calculated by OWL. Actual returns may vary based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) undisclosed positions, short exposure, non-equity holdings, cash holdings, and lagged disclosure of positions.

This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.