Posts by Gaurav Patankar, PhD
The E&F Advocate: Endowment Turbulence – A Crisis at the Crosswinds of Politics, Policy, and Portfolio Strategy
photo credit: ideogram.ai Back in calmer times, larger endowments operated with seeming invisibility—quietly compounding capital over decades, shielded from public glare. Fast forward to today, these capital pools sit squarely in the eye of a brewing political and financial storm. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia—once synonymous with strategic patience and long-termism—are now recalibrating rapidly. The…
Read MoreThe E&F Advocate: Key Takeaways on Proposed Endowment Tax Changes
photo credit: ideogram.ai The proposed endowment tax changes aim to increase the current 1.4% excise tax on net investment income of certain private colleges and universities to rates as high as 21% or more. Additionally, there are proposals to broaden the tax’s applicability by lowering the endowment assets per student threshold from $500,000 to…
Read MoreThe E&F Advocate: Five Pillars of Endowment Governance to Support Greater Liquidity, Transparency and Returns
Photo credit: Dreamstime The “Yale Model” of endowment investment strategy created by David Swenson, successful for decades, may be nearing retirement. What was developed during a time of falling interest rates, less asset class ubiquity, and diminished premiums for exotics, may be a far less tenable model in 2025. Models like Yale’s with their reliance…
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