VC assets accounted for 19% of Yale’s endowment portfolio by June 2018 compared with 13.7% four years previously, as resources shifted away from leveraged buyouts and real estate.

Yale University’s endowment increased the proportion of its portfolio held in VC assets to 19% in June 2018 from 17.1% at the end of the previous fiscal year, according its annual investment report. The share of the $29.4bn endowment held in VC has climbed substantially compared with the 13.7% reported in 2014. VC assets performed solidly for Yale over the past 20 years, registering a 24.6% time-weighted return when adjusting for statistical variations resulting from the internet boom. Successful VC exits for the university have included business networking site LinkedIn, which returned $84.4m on its original $2.7m investment upon going public in 2011, according to Bloomberg. Led by Yale’s chief investment officer David Swensen since 1985, the endowment helped popularise an institutional investment strategy focused on dividing roughly equivalent resources between different asset classes. The share of Yale’s assets held in leveraged buyout funds fell to 14.1% as of June 2018 from 19.3% in 2014, while real estate assets were trimmed to 10.3% from 17.6% over the same period. By contrast, hedge funds now account for 26.1% of the endowment’s portfolio, up from 17.4% in 2014.

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