Ohio State University's long-term investment pool returned -3.43% in the fiscal year ended June 30, more than 4 percentage points below its 0.67% policy benchmark, said Rob Messinger, director of communications of the university's business and finance office, in an e-mail.
The best-performing asset class in that time period was real assets, which returned 10.76%, nearly 5 percentage points above its policy benchmark of 5.95%. Global fixed income returned 0.33%, almost 6 percentage points below its policy benchmark of 6%, and global equities returned -7.19%, compared to its policy benchmark of -3.17%.
“Turbulent markets and unusual events, such as the Brexit vote results, had a negative effect on endowment funds across the country, including ours. We remain confident in our long-term strategy, which is designed to provide risk-adjusted returns to support teaching, learning and research,” said John C. Lane, vice president and chief investment officer, in a statement provided by Mr. Messinger.
As of June 30, the actual allocation was 58.4% global equities, 31.1% global fixed income and 10.5% real assets.
Within the global equities, allocations were 28.7% of the whole investment portfolio to long-only equities, 12% long/short equities, 8.5% buyout/growth private equity, 6.2% natural resources, 2.3% private equity fund of funds/secondaries, 0.5% venture capital and 0.2% liquidating assets.
Within global fixed income, allocations were 18.1% absolute return, 7.7% fixed income, 3.4% private credit and 1.9% credit funds.
Real assets was made up of 6.3% real estate and 4.2% infrastructure.
The Columbus-based university's long-term investment pool has about $3.6 billion in assets, which include $2.3 billion in endowment assets.