N.P. “Narv” Narvekar, head of Harvard Management Co., scored a pay package of $9.25 million in his first full year spearheading an overhaul of the university’s ailing $39 billion endowment.
The compensation for 2017 included $2.75 million that the school agreed to give Narvekar to reimburse him for pay he forfeited when he left his job overseeing Columbia University’s investment office in 2016, Harvard Management said in a release Friday.
Harvard, the world’s richest school, has drawn criticism because it pays investment staffers more than peers while generating mediocre returns. The school hired Narvekar to overhaul the investment office, including changing compensation by tying bonuses to overall performance instead of the asset class in which staffers specialize. Narvekar also slashed headcount and shifted away from making direct investments in real estate and using hedge fund strategies in-house.
Amid the changes, Harvard’s performance has trailed peers. Less than a year into Narvekar’s tenure, the university reported a 8.1% gain on June 30, 2017, which was more than four percentage points below the industry average for endowments. Last June, Harvard reported a 10% return for the year, beating the industry average but still trailing most of its Ivy peers.