Harvard Hedge Takes a Beating

No, not that kind of hedge. Harvard lost $350 million by investing in a hedge fund. Maybe they thought the hedge fund would rake in the cash because it was run by a man who used to manage Harvard's foreign stock holdings. They were wrong.

When Jeffrey Larson left the confines of Harvard to run his own firm, Harvard gave him a parting gift of $500 million. Larson lost the $350 from that and sold off the rest to Citadel Management Group. That's just play money for Harvard. Their endowment is still $29.2 billion.

As always, Ivy Gate Blog has something to say about Harvard's judgment: "Seems that Harvard education -- in this case, experience -- isn't quite paying off. How's that old saying go? You shouldn't shit where you sleep?"

This isn't the first time a university has gambled its money on market. The University of California at Berkeley was named the lead plaintiff in the Enron mess. At least Harvard is loaded and won't hurt too much from this, but it proves that the Harvard management is as vulnerable as the rest of us schleps when it comes to getting burned in the wallet.

Image of the Harvard shield from Wikipedia.