Notre Dame Endowment Loses 6.9% in 2022 | Chief Investment Officer

The University of Notre Dame’s endowment lost 6.9% for fiscal year 2022 ending June 30, as its asset value declined to $18.9 billion from just under $20.3 billion the previous year. While this was in sharp contrast to fiscal 2021’s outsized return of 53.2%, it easily outperformed its benchmark, which was down 13.5% for the fiscal year.

“The effect of the sharp downturn in public equity markets, especially in the final quarter, was tempered by performance in private equity and multi-strategy portfolios, which outperformed their respective benchmarks for the year,” the university’s annual report stated. “Investment returns are once again the primary driver of the change in overall net assets given the proportion of the University’s assets held in the Endowment Pool.”

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The university reported five-, 10- and 20-year annualized returns of 13.0%, 11.6% and 10.7%, respectively, compared with its benchmark’s returns of 5.2%, 5.8% and 6.0%, respectively, over the same time periods. The university report also compared the endowment’s performance against a portfolio comprised of 60% equities and 40% bonds, which lost 13.9% in 2022 and has five-, 10- and 20-year annualized returns of 4.7%, 6.0% and 6.2%, respectively.

The asset allocation for Notre Dame’s endowment pool as of the end of fiscal 2022 was 48.5% in private equity, 28.6% in multi-strategy investments and 22.9% in public equity. The biggest change in asset allocation from the previous year was in public equities, which was reduced from 31.2% in 2021.

The endowment also raised its allocation to private equity and multi-strategy investments (which includes fixed-income assets and diversifiers intended to be less correlated to equity markets) from 45.9% and 22.9%, respectively. Meanwhile, the asset allocation for the endowment pool’s benchmark is 40% private equity, 35% public equity and 25% multi-strategy investments.