Columbia Endowment Achieves 11.5% Return in Fiscal 2024

The Columbia University Investment Management Corp., which manages the endowment of Columbia University, announced recently that the fund achieved an 11.5% return in fiscal 2024, the one-year period ending June 30.

In a statement, IMC President and CEO Kim Lew attributed the endowment’s returns to strong performance in the private markets. Lew also noted that the fund’s private assets lagged their benchmarks but delivered positive performance.

“We continue to implement a deliberately paced re-positioning of the private portfolio, and we are optimistic that the current market cycle presents investment opportunities that will benefit performance in the long term,” Lew said in a statement.

Columbia, the second Ivy League endowment to report its 2024 fiscal performance, rebounded from what was a weak fiscal year in 2023 for most university endowments. Columbia had the highest-performing endowment amongst its Ivy League peers in fiscal 2023, returning 4.7%. In fiscal 2022, the fund returned negative 7.6%, the worst performance among Ivy League endowments.

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Dartmouth College recently posted an 8.4% return for fiscal 2024 following a 1.6% return in fiscal 2023 and a negative 3.1% in fiscal year 2022.

As of the end of fiscal 2023, the Columbia endowment allocated 30% of its portfolio to hedge funds, 26% to private equity, 24% to global equities, 14% to real assets, 4% to cash and 3% to fixed income. In fiscal 2024, Columbia’s endowment assets grew to $14.8 billion, based on a combination of investment returns and gifts to the university.

For the past five- and 10-year periods, the endowment returned an annualized 8.5% and 7.4%, respectively.