Endowment Model Pioneer David Swensen Dies
Posted on 05/06/2021
David Swensen, Yale’s chief investment officer, died at the age of 67 on May 5, 2021 in the evening after a long and courageous battle with cancer. Swensen had undergone years of treatment for cancer. Swensen had gone on temporary leave from his job in September 2012 to undergo treatment before coming back to work at Yale.
In a press release from Yale’s President Peter Salovey, “After receiving his Ph.D. in economics from Yale in 1980, David worked for Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers before returning to Yale in 1985 to lead our investments office. With his guidance, Yale’s endowment yielded returns that established him as a legend among institutional investors. Over the years, he lectured in Yale College and the School of Management. On Monday, he and long-time friend and colleague Dean Takahashi taught the last class of the term for Investment Analysis, a seminar they co-instructed for thirty-five years. David was an incorporator of the Elizabethan Club and a fellow of Berkeley College. In fact, he was a first-year counselor in Berkeley when he was studying for his doctorate at Yale, and he maintained connections with the people he counseled all those decades ago.”
Swensen expanded Yale university’s endowment from US$ 1 billion in 1985 to US$ 31.2 billion in 2020.
David F. Swensen Ranks #5 on Public Investor 100-2016
SWFI Staff has released the Public Investor 100. He ranks 5 out of 100 for the SWFI Public Investor 100 – 2016.
Known as the Financial Wizard of Yale, David Swensen pioneered the endowment model known as the Yale Model, drastically affecting the way asset managers and institutional investors do business. The Yale Model is an investment strategy named after the ivy league university endowment that popularized the concept. Swensen believes that long-term institutional investors such as endowments, pension funds and sovereign funds, can generate superior returns by carefully picking alternative investments in asset classes such as hedge funds, private equity, real estate and infrastructure at the expense of traditional fixed income and public equities. The model favors committing a high percentage of the portfolio toward illiquid assets. Without Swensen, many institutional investors would certainly think differently about how to manage long-term institutional assets. Swensen literally penned the textbook on endowments.
