Harvard Names New CEO To Manage World's Largest University Endowment

Harvard Management Company has named a new president and chief executive officer to head the university's investments, The Harvard Crimson reports.

Incoming president and CEO Stephen Blyth is currently a HMC managing director and head of public markets, as well as a statistics professor at Harvard University. Starting on January 1, 2015, Blyth will be in charge of managing the university's endowment, which at $36.4 billion is the largest in the world.

Harvard's press release notes that in Blyth's current role he is "responsible for investments in public equity, credit, and fixed-income markets, accounting for roughly 40% of the endowment and other assets that HMC invests through its hybrid model of internal and external management."

HMC reported a 15.4% investment return for FY14 on Tuesday. While a .8% beat over internal projects, Harvard's returns were still outpaced by peer institutions such as MIT, Yale, and Dartmouth, which each saw returns over 19% for the year.

According to The Crimson, "In his role as a professor, Blyth has taught Statistics 123: 'Applied Quantitative Finance,' a popular undergraduate course within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, since 2009, and was awarded the Alpha Iota Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2013."

Before joining HMC in 2006, Blyth was Managing Director and head of the Global Rates proprietary trading group for Deutsche Bank's London office, according to his HMC biography. He will replace outgoing CEO Jane Mendillo, who announced her retirement in June after eight years leading the HMC.