After stints at Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers, Swensen returned to his alma mater in 1985 to lead its investment office. At the time, endowments were typically conservatively managed, but Swensen overhauled the model dramatically, taking advantage of their long-term focus to invest heavily in the nascent private equity and hedge fund industries. His approach was so successful it revolutionized how endowments and many other institutional investors allocate their money, and the “Yale model” spread and helped change the wider investment industry.
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Yale endowment’s David Swensen dies
“With his guidance, Yale’s endowment yielded returns that established him as a legend among institutional investors,” Peter Salovey, Yale’s president, said in a statement. “A natural teacher, he prepared a generation of institutional investors who have gone on to lead investment offices at other colleges and universities, further extending the scope of David’s influence.”
