Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., saw its $2.8 billion investment pool return a net 3.3% for the fiscal year ended June 30, below its 5% policy benchmark, a performance report published by the school said.
Venture capital was the best performing asset class of the year, returning a net 12.95%, driven by exposure to sectors that benefited "from tailwinds associated with COVID-19" such as e-commerce, social media, workforce collaboration software, cybersecurity and education technology, the report said.
Buyouts returned 9.55%; followed by global long/short equity, 7.32%; global long equity, 6.55%; cash and short-term Treasuries, 1.24%; absolute return hedge funds, -0.05%; real estate, -0.1%; non-investment-grade fixed income, -10.47%; and real assets, -22.06%.
As of June 30, the pool had a target asset allocation of 23% long global equity; 19% each to absolute return and global long/short equity; 10% non-investment-grade fixed income; 9% buyouts; 6% each to venture capital, real estate and real assets; and 2% cash and short-term Treasuries.
For the three, five, 10 and 20 years all ended June. 30, the pool returned an annualized 8.7%, 7.7%, 10.3% and 7%, respectively, vs. its return objectives of 6.7%, 6.6%, 7% and 7.3% for those periods.
The pool returned a net 9.6% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019.
