David F. Swensen
David F. Swensen (born 1954 ) since 1985, investment director of Yale University. He has the responsibility to manage the endowment of the University, which was 22 billion U.S. dollars in 2007. He reached the last 10 years an average annual return on investment of 17.2% with its investments. Swensen increased the assets of Yale by more than 16 billion U.S. dollars; his regular above-average high annual return on investment attracted the attention of many Wall Street manager up.
He has teamed up with his investment strategy - made a name - known as " The Yale Model ". This strategy is an application of portfolio theory.
After his BA and BS degree in 1975 at the Canadian University of Wisconsin- River Falls Swensen graduated with a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University. The topic of his dissertation were rating models for corporate bonds - " A Model for the Valuation of Corporate Bonds ."
Before Professor Swensen in 1985 started working at Yale, he spent six years on Wall Street: three years at Lehman Brothers and at Salomon Brothers. He worked at this time with the development of swap and corporate finance products.
Swensen is a trustee of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Chief Financial Officer of the Hopkins School. He works as a trustee of TIAA Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association - College Retirement Equities Fund; He is a board member of Schroders, one of the 100 largest companies in the UK. He was consultant for the Carnegie Corporation, the New York Stock Exchange, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Yale - New Haven Hospital, the American states of Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Swensen teaches foundations at Yale College and the Yale School of Management.
The Yale Model
David F. Swensen has developed the Yale model and proactive in his book portfolio strategies. Innovative and successful ways in institutional investment described. In simple terms, it describes how to divide the portfolio in about 5 to 6 equal parts and either investing in different asset classes. A central component of the Yale model are portfolio shifts that are made because of market fluctuations, which leads to an anti -cyclical investing. Swensen demanded that liquidity should be avoided because high liquidity conditional a low return on investment. This approach was revolutionary in its day and is now recognized standard of knowledge.
Swensen graduates
The work of Swensen affected the investments of many managers of endowment well over Yale also. So, for example, worked following administrator of Endowments earlier for Swensen:
- Andrew K. Golden, Princeton University
- Seth Alexander, MIT
- Paula Volent, Bowdoin College
- Ellen Shuman, Carnegie Corporation
Successful Investing - Strategies for private investors
In 2005, Swensen wrote invest his book Successful as a handbook for private investors. He recommends retail investors summarized the following investment strategy:
- A private investor to its portfolio of six asset classes eg build: Domestic equities, foreign equities in developed markets, emerging markets, equities, real estate, government bonds, inflation-protected government bonds. Then to a percentage target strategy are defined for each asset class such as: 30 %, 15 %, 5 %, 20 %, 15 %, 15 %.
- Private investors should regularly reallocate its portfolio to return to the defined percentage strategic objectives for each asset class.
- Private investors should steer clear of financial products that are associated with high costs, high annual fees, taxes or other expenses.
Swensen denounced the high fees of mutual funds with active management and showed the conflicts of interest between mutual fund investors and mutual fund company on.