David Swensen
David Frederick Swensen (January 26, 1954 – May 5, 2021) was an American endowment fund manager, who was chief investment officer at Yale University from 1985 until his death in May 2021.
Swensen was responsible for managing and investing Yale's endowment assets and investment funds. When Swenson started managing the Yale Endowment in 1985, it was worth $1.3 billion. By 2021 this had grown to $31.2 billion, after disbursements. Average annual returns over the 30 years to 2020 were 12.4%. Swenson was the highest-paid employee in Yale, leading a team of about 30 employees. With Dean Takahashi, he invented an application of the modern portfolio theory known in the investing world as the "Endowment Model" or the "Yale Model".
His investment success with the Yale Endowment attracted the notice of Wall Street portfolio managers and others. "He's right up there with John Bogle, Peter Lynch, [Benjamin] Graham, and [David] Dodd as a major force in investment management," according to Byron Wien, a longtime Wall Street strategist. Investment heads from universities such as Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Wesleyan, and the University of Pennsylvania adopted his allocation strategies to mixed success.
Swensen was listed third on aiCIO's 2012, a list of the 100 most influential institutional investors worldwide. In 2008, he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame.
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