<p>Penn Endowment Grows by 20.2% to $6.6 Billion in Best Performance in 10 Years</p>
<p>Press release can be found here: <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=1221%5B/url%5D">http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=1221</a></p>
<p>aWol the more impressive when you consider that the markets have imploded as of late. Somebody got very lucky betting against subprime mortgages...</p>
<p>Its about time the university with the world's best business school started getting returns like this.</p>
<p>Have we surpassed Columbia by a significant margin yet?</p>
<p>This is as of June 30th (end of the fiscal year), BEFORE the subprime problems really hit. Still, the new investment team--led by Kristin Gilbertson, whom Penn snagged from Stanford 3 years ago--seems to really have its act together, and is positioning Penn's endowment for excellent growth in the years to come.</p>
<p>By the way, one of the things Gilbertson has done is to extensively diversify the portfolio beyond the heavy US large-cap equity concentration that really weighed it down in the '90s, by transitioning into private equity, real estate, international markets, unique exclusive investment opportunities, etc. As she explains it, this will lay the groundwork for some very strong returns on investment in the future. Hopefully, it has also somewhat immunized the endowment from the volatility caused by the subprime problems.</p>
<p>Good point. Well let's hope for the best for Penn (and the worst for everyone else...I know Harvard lost $350 million on some investment gone wrong earlier this year...couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people)</p>
<p>Technical point: the return on investments was 20.2%. The overall annual endowment growth (including contributions, etc.) was more like 24.2%. Not bad at all.</p>