Harvard - Allston Campus

stellarfun said:
^^^
That's not exactly right. After key players of Harvard Management Company left (because of a few alumni complaints about their compensation levels) they formed their owned companies, and Harvard promptly turned over very large chunks of the endowment for them to manage.

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Stellar, my quote from Bloomberg shows that only $500 million subsequently went to the Jack Meyer folks, less than 3% of the endowment. While $500 million is alot of money, let's keep that 3% of the endowment fact in the perspective.

Incredible, that 0.3% in management costs was what derailed Harvard into trying to fix something that "wasn't broke".

Where are those critics today who campaigned to run the Meyer people out of Harvard??? They owe everybody a comment, no?
 
stellarfun said:
IMO, the better Bloomberg story on Harvard's problems.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHQ2Xh55jI.Q&pos=10
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OK, let's use YOUR link there, Stellar:

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"....Harvard unwound the swaps at possibly the worst moment in the history of financial markets, said Shapiro, the municipal swap adviser. Just as Harvard?s request for approval to sell tax-exempt bonds arrived in the state offices, the swap market began sliding, according to Bloomberg data. While the school waited for permission to raise money, the price to break the swap agreements escalated.

Tumbling Index

On Nov. 13, the index used to value the agreements, the U.S. dollar 30-year swap rate, closed at 4.247 percent. By the time Harvard held its bond sale Dec. 8, the swap index had tumbled to 2.7575 percent. Harvard exited three of its swaps tied to $431 million debt on Dec. 9, when the benchmark fell again to 2.6885 percent. The interest-rate swap market reached a record low of 2.363 percent on Dec. 18.

Harvard?s decision to borrow money came at a time when the difference, or spread, between yields on corporate and U.S. Treasury securities was the widest since at least 1990, according to data from Barclays Plc. That meant AAA-rated Harvard was selling bonds when the market was demanding the biggest premium in at least 18 years.

?December 2008 was, by an enormous amount, the worst time in history? to terminate the swaps by borrowing money, said Shapiro.


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and, then there's this:

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"......Recovering Values

Since then, some of the values in the swap market have recovered to their levels of December 2004 when Harvard signed the forward contracts.

?If Harvard had waited, the cost of terminating may well have been lower, but they weren?t willing to take that risk,? said Matt Fabian, managing director at Municipal Market Advisors in Westport, Connecticut.

Shore said that he, Mendillo and ?a lot of us in senior management? contributed to the decision to break the swap agreements. That group included Ed Forst, the former executive vice president, who returned to Goldman Sachs after less than a year at Harvard, Shore said. Shore also cited Harvard Corp.?s role as bearing the school?s ultimate fiduciary responsibility. Forst didn?t return calls seeking comment......"
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So, if the post-Meyer Harvard hadn't crapped their pants, they wouldn't have locked in their losses.

Once again, the Meyer group, which had beaten the benchmark indexes by over 5% per year for 15 years was forced out over 0.3% management fees and charges.

You get what you pay for in this world.
 
The swaps, which assumed that interest rates would rise, proved so toxic that the 373-year-old institution agreed to pay banks a total of almost $1 billion to terminate them. Most of the wrong-way bets were made in 2004...
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So, Meyer is the one that made the bad bets. And those bets were unusually risky:
?There have been lots of forward swaps, but out longer than three years is relatively rare,? Shapiro said in a telephone interview. That duration increases the risk, because the longer the term of the contract, the more volatile the value of the swap, he said.
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So Meyer is responsible for (most of) the toxic investments. You can argue that the post-Meyer group crapped their pants and that Meyer's wouldn't have unwound the swaps so hastily but that's both 1) extremely hypothetical, and 2) ignores the fact that the collateral calls triggered by the swaps were contributing to a liquidity crisis that Harvard was trying to get out from under.
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
So, Meyer is the one that made the bad bets. And those bets were unusually risky:


So Meyer is responsible for (most of) the toxic investments. You can argue that the post-Meyer group crapped their pants and that Meyer's wouldn't have unwound the swaps so hastily but that's both 1) extremely hypothetical, and 2) ignores the fact that the collateral calls triggered by the swaps were contributing to a liquidity crisis that Harvard was trying to get out from under.
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Baloney. That's like people who invested in stocks in 2004 and who panicked and sold in March 2009 saying that investing in stocks is "bad".

Nope. THEIR TIMING on getting out was bad.

Most market indexes are ABOVE their 2004 levels today. Even Stellarfun's link states that those bets that Meyer made would be whole right now. The fact that Harvard went on a subsequent spending binge to necessitate (in their minds) PREMATURELY unwinding the 2004 moves is the fault of the folks who came after Meyer left in 2005.

And the reason why they moved out the people responsible for beating the indexes by over 5% per year for 15 years was a 0.3% management charge.

Boston's landscape and Harvard's future is now indelibly changed for the next half-century over 0.3%.
 
We both agree that Meyer was a very capable asset manager. I just don't think you can sit back and say, "The idiots that replaced Meyer caused all this."
We know Meyer made risky investments.
We know those investments decreased in value (at least temporarily)
We know Harvard bailed on them at the worst possible time.
We don't know whether Meyer would have made the same decision.
And most importantly we don't even know that Meyer's successors made the decision to bail (there was a liquidity crunch in all aspects of Harvard's finances - Harvard Management Corp may have been directed to unwind the swaps).
 
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Baloney. That's like people who invested in stocks in 2004 and who panicked and sold in March 2009 saying that investing in stocks is "bad".

Nope. THEIR TIMING on getting out was bad.
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Not a relevant comparison. Stocks represent ownership in a going concern. They're intended to be long-term holds that appreciate over time. Interest rate swaps represent an option at one point in time. (I.e., Anyone can buy a share in an S&P 500 index fund and be virtually certain it will be worth more in 20 years than it is now. If you buy an interest rate swap you're paying for the chance to swap rates at a point in the future. You can't "ride out the market" in the same way you can with a stock).
 
After he left, Meyer lost money in his new hedge fund in 2006, and was flat in 2007.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/2/15/convexity-capital-falls-short-of-expectations/

In 2008-2009,
Harvard?s investments with Meyer?s Convexity lost 27 percent to $722 million.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akEKjenRO24Q

William Strauss (now dead) and the other 10 class of '69 alums were probably not the main reason for Meyer's leaving. It wasn't like they were big donors to the university, in fact they probably gave little. IMO, Meyer was weary of Summers and Rubin second-guessing and back-seat driving when it came to the HMC.

As to who kept Harvard so illiquid, there is a blog on the Web where a few Harvard professors and deans give voice to their frustration, angst, and suspicion, and while I haven't read it recently, even they (and several had/have first-hand insider knowledge) were not fully connecting all the dots.

A university president -- western U.S. university -- once told me, that Washington politics has nothing on university politics.
 
Harvard Business School Receives $50 Million Gift From India's Tata Group
By John Hechinger - Oct 14, 2010 2:18 PM ET

Harvard Business School received $50 million from India?s Tata Group and its related philanthropies to fund a new academic and residential building in Boston for executive-education programs.

The gift is the largest from an international donor in the business school?s 102-year history, Harvard said in an e-mailed statement today. Half the 9,000 business leaders in the school?s Advanced Management Program each year come from abroad.

Mumbai-based Tata Group has operations in steel, cars and hotels and owns 28 publicly traded companies with a combined market value of $80 billion, according to the statement (you might know them as the company that recently introduced India's ultra cheap car the Tata Nano - kz). Ratan Tata, 72, chairman of Tata Sons Ltd., attended the business school?s management program in 1975.

?We are pleased that this gift will support the school?s educational mission to mold the next generation of global business leaders,? Tata said in the statement.

Link
Link to Harvard's press release

--

Also, a press release on their reusing the old WGBH building as a business incubator....

Harvard Launches Innovation Incubator Opens lab for innovation and entrepreneurship in Allston

BOSTON?Harvard University announced today the opening of its first lab for innovation and entrepreneurship with the goal of spurring innovative ventures across the University, at Harvard Business School (HBS), and in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood. The Harvard Innovation Lab will open in fall 2011 in a building on Western Avenue in Allston that formerly housed public broadcasting's WGBH.

"For the University as well as for the economy and our nation, the importance of innovation cannot be overstated," said Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust. "It is also of utmost importance and great interest to our students and faculty, many of whom are inventors and entrepreneurs. This lab will foster team-based activities and deepen interactions among both aspiring and experienced innovators across the schools of Harvard."

Harvard Business School, long a center for teaching and scholarship in the area of entrepreneurship, will fund and develop the lab, while opening its doors to the University. "We see it as a potentially quite distinctive resource ?" not one that would attempt to replicate other successful innovation spaces in Massachusetts, but one that would leverage Harvard's people and resources in new and exciting ways," said HBS Dean Nitin Nohria. "Our goal is to drive innovation by connecting entrepreneurial teams, not only across the Charles River, but nationally and internationally, in an interdisciplinary approach to creating viable business ventures and social initiatives."

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, a champion for spurring innovation in the city to grow the economy and create jobs, joined Dean Nohria at the announcement. He noted that Boston is a city with deep roots in innovation and entrepreneurship. "Harvard is an important part of that history and their investment in this facility in Allston will ensure that they play an important role in the future of innovation in Boston."

Like the very enterprises it will house, the concept for the Harvard Innovation Lab had entrepreneurial origins. HBS Professor Peter Tufano, who drafted the initial proposal, saw the potential for the lab. "Student entrepreneurs don't respect academic silos, but nevertheless often found it hard to connect across school boundaries," he said. "If we could find ways to facilitate those interactions, bringing them together in an environment that stimulates the sharing of ingenuity, knowledge, and skills, innovation and creativity could flourish. The potential of a unified Harvard could partially be realized."

Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) Dean Cherry Murray sees the lab as an ideal way to bridge the gaps across academic disciplines. "Innovation isn't bounded by organizational structures and areas of study," said Murray. "I'm thrilled to broaden the experience of SEAS students by bringing them together with their counterparts from other fields such as design, business, government, law, medicine, and science."

The Harvard Innovation Lab is planned to come on line beginning in the fall semester of 2011. During stage one of the launch, it will be open to student entrepreneurs across the University, including undergraduates, students in Harvard's professional schools, and graduate students. Student teams will have shared space to work on their ventures, access to experienced Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, support by faculty and administrators, and a program of related activities to deepen their understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Some student teams will work independently, while others will work as part of established courses. For example, teams of students in the jointly taught HBS and SEAS course Inventing Breakthroughs & Commercializing Science will use the Lab to create plans for commercializing University/private lab research. The course builds interdisciplinary student teams from several Harvard schools as well as MIT and Tufts with backgrounds in business, medicine, law, government, engineering, and science. Also in stage one, the 150 or so teams entering the annual HBS Business Plan Contest would also be given work space in the Lab along with HBS Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, a group that has included the likes of Jeffrey Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners and Susan Decker, former president of Yahoo. The intent is to create a supportive and interactive environment where ideas and activities can be shared across disciplines and ranges of experience.

Stage two of the launch will include a mix of innovation-oriented programs and services that benefit small businesses and entrepreneurs in the surrounding community. For example, the Lab will engage groups affiliated with HBS to work with local entrepreneurs and business and may provide rent-free space to such organizations and to others who can work with Allston community business owners and entrepreneurs.

The Innovation Lab will be led by a team whose job is to connect the various Harvard entrepreneurship programs?such as HBS's Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and The Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH), based at SEAS--and to link student teams with the right people and resources to overcome hurdles and foster their success.

Link
 
Absurd NIMBYism run amok!

From universalhub:

The Allston Civic Association narrowly voted to oppose plans for an upscale pizza place at what is now an abandoned Citgo station on Western Avenue because family restaurants shouldn't serve beer or wine, the Crimson reports.

Harvard, which owns the 182 Western Ave. property, wants to lease it to Stone Hearth Pizza, which has restaurants in Cambridge, Belmont and Needham.
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This makes it likely that Stone Hearth Pizza will not come to Western Ave for absurd reasons. Comments on Adam's post are, of course, aghast at this. And it's clear the Allston Civic Association has gone beyond all boundaries of rationality - and what's worse, it's a closed organization with little mandate for real representative decision making. One uhub commenter posts:

By Amie Searles (not verified) - 10/21/10 - 11:31 am#23.

I just spoke to our city councilman, Mark Ciommo, and he gave me a list of people to contact if you're against this absurd vote. I'm urging everyone to email the Mayor, the President of the Allston Brighton Civic Association, and fax the licensing board (nope, they don't share their email address).

Mayors office: Dan Roan, daniel.roan@cityofboston.gov

President of Allston Brighton Civic Association: Paul Berkeley, berkeley7@msn.com

Assistant to Mark Ciommo: Jason Wright: jason.wright@cityofboston.gov,

Licensing board: fax to 635-4742

Thanks,
Amie
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Link: http://www.universalhub.com/2010/allston-neighborhood-group-would-rather-have-aband#comments
 
This is my neighborhood and I will email in support of the restaurant.
 
Most recent photo of the Allston Civic Association:

Prohibition.jpg
 
Stone Hearth has been in Porter Square for years without causing any problems for the neighborhood.
 
this is also my neighborhood and would welcome an eaterie or six on the north side of the pike.

....as long as it would mesh with a future barry's corner build out
 
This is the same neighborhood that loudly and continually criticizes Harvard for the vacant space in Harvard-owned commercial buildings along Western Ave.

To be fair, some of those who criticize Harvard are also criticizing this Allston Civic Association vote. But the association vote does leave the larger impression that this is a schizoid community, which only further marginalizes their input and viewpoint.

The former gas station site is characterized by Harvard as the keystone block in the future development of Barry's Corners. (IIRC, Keystone was the name used for a LLC that bought the parcel in Harvard's name.) But Harvard can't develop the block until it also buys a single, small, wooden apartment building and the dry cleaners building to the east of the gas station.
 
We knew this was inevitable


Skating club swaps land with Harvard to build new Allston facility
June 09, 2011|By Matt Rocheleau, Town Correspondent, Globe Staff
By Matt Rocheleau, Town Correspondent

The Skating Club of Boston announced today that it will develop a new world-class, state-of-the art facility at 176 Lincoln Street in Allston.

The Club?s future home will accommodate unmet demands for ice time, expand the club?s public offerings, and create additional opportunities for its competitive skaters.

The Skating Club of Boston, which bills itself as the third-oldest skating club in the nation, has entered into a land-exchange agreement with Harvard University, trading its current location along Western Avenue in Allston for the University?s Lincoln Street property, also in Allston. The property at 176 Lincoln currently houses a building shell, which will be demolished to make room for the construction of the new skating facility.

?This expansion is long overdue. The Skating Club of Boston is excited to grow its organization while remaining part of the neighborhood it has called home for over 70 years,? said Joe Blount, President of The Skating Club of Boston.

The club faced considerable space constraints at its current location. The new facility will enable the Club to accommodate expanded programming and increase ice time.

?We approached Harvard because 176 Lincoln Street offers us the perfect opportunity to solve our space challenges, improve access, facilitate future growth and remain in the community,? said Blount.

The Club?s new facility will feature three rinks, which will enable the club it to support training for competitive figure skaters, learn-to-skate programs, synchronized skating, theater on ice, recreational public skating, and hockey.

As part of the agreement, Harvard University will become owner of the current rink on Western Avenue and will rent it back to The Skating Club of Boston during the construction of the new facility.
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http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-09/yourtown/29639257_1_skating-club-soldiers-field-road-ice-time
 
The property at 176 Lincoln St. is 444,000 sq ft and was built by Cabot Cabot and Forbes as the Boston Tech Center. It was originally developed as a telecom center for Internet providers.

I don't think it was ever occupied before Harvard bought it from CCF.

There was a rumor several years ago that WBZ and Harvard were talking about a swap, with WBZ moving to Lincoln St., and Harvard acquiring the Soldiers Field Rd property of WBZ.
 
^^ I though this was built relatively recently, just never occupied? Also the groundbreaking for new Charlesview at Brighton Mills was a good month ago now. Not even a fence has been put up. Which makes me realize how lame these ground breakings are.
 
GW2500 said:
^^ I though this was built relatively recently, just never occupied? Also the groundbreaking for new Charlesview at Brighton Mills was a good month ago now. Not even a fence has been put up. Which makes me realize how lame these ground breakings are.
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ServeAttachment.ashx


Built in 2001.

http://www.loopnet.com/Listing/13568055/Boston-Tech-Center-176-Lincoln-Street-Brighton-MA/

I believe the Skating Club owns the land on which the motel (just to the east of the Skating Club) is; I suspect, but don't know for sure, that was included in the swap as well.
 
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Thanks, Hopefully they can recycle a good chunk of the material, even then a whole lot of wasted energy there. But a big skating facility is cool.
 
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