Harvard Management Company turns 40
In 1974, Walter Cabot sat alone in an office at 60 Congress St. in Boston’s Financial District. Looking around at piles of freshly arrived moving boxes, he thought of the $960 million that Harvard had entrusted him to manage, and wondered what he had gotten himself into. “I was the only employee, sitting around a lot of packing boxes, and asking: What has the corporation done to me?’” Cabot said. In the years to come, Cabot would create an institutional investment business unlike any other. Known as Harvard Management Company (HMC), it would grow impressively, as would its reputation for investment acumen and the total of endowment funds in its care. Today, HMC is viewed as a leader in institutional investment circles, and Harvard’s endowment, $32.7 billion at the close of the last fiscal year, is the largest in higher education. Perhaps more importantly, however, is that what also has grown has been...