The poisoned chalice

Jack Meyer is leaving the Harvard Management Corporation – the body which invests the Ivy League college’s endowment – with his excellent track record intact. His investment performance has been so good that he leaves not just a hard act to follow, but an impossible one. When Meyer arrived at Harvard in 1990, its endowment was less than $5bn. Now, it is approaching $26bn. Generally speaking, it gets harder to maintain investment returns as the pot of money under management grows. Yale, for in...