The entrance to Front Green at Brown University.
Brown University's $6.5 billion endowment returned a net -4.6% for the fiscal year ended June 30, said Brian E. Clark, spokesman for the Providence, R.I.-based university, in an email.
For the three, five and 10 years ended June 30, the endowment returned an annualized net 17.4%, 15.5% and 12.3%, respectively.
The endowment had returned a net 51.5% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2020. Benchmark figures and asset allocation information were not provided.
For the year ended June 30, the Russell 3000 index and Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond index returned -13.9% and -10.3%, respectively, in sharp contrast to returns of 44.2% and 4.6% for the year ended June 30, 2021.
"While recent years have been rich with opportunities to grow the Brown endowment, Fiscal Year 2022 proved to be a moment when the protection of assets was our paramount goal," said Jane Dietze, vice president and chief investment officer, in a news release Thursday. "As the world grappled with continued negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, new geopolitical conflicts, the highest inflation rates in decades and monetary tightening by central banks, markets delivered substantial losses across the board."
Ms. Dietze said the endowment outperformed both broad indexes and market-based benchmarks. Its performance, however, did fall below above the median return of -3.1% among the 25 university endowments whose returns for the year ended June 30 have been tracked by Pensions & Investments as of Thursday.
While asset allocation information was not available for the most recent fiscal year, the university's most recently published endowment report had the actual allocation as of June 30, 2021, as 39% private equity, 25% absolute return, 20% public equities, 8% real assets, 5% fixed income, and the rest in cash and receivables.
