Financial Lineup Is Complete

The Corporation completed its two-year plan to build an all-new team of money managers this week, naming five commercial management firms to handle about ten per cent of the University's endowment.

Each of the companies will manage $25 million segments of the $1.2 billion portfolio, while the Harvard Management Company will continue to handle the rest.

The turnover has been complete; all of the faces on the team are new to the Harvard financial scene. In chronological order, the additions since former Treasurer George F. Bennett '33 announced his retirement in late 1972 have been: Treasurer George Putnam '49, Walter M. Cabot '54, president of the Harvard Management Company that was formed to take over as portfolio manager from Bennett's company, State Street Management and Research Company; Cabot's 10-person staff of highly-touted investment and economic experts; State Street Trust Company, the University's new custodial banker; and the five firms named this week--F. Eberstadt and Company, the Fiduciary Trust Company of New York, MacKay-Shields Financial Corporation, Brown Brothers Harriman, and Scudder, Stevens and Clark.

Putnam and Cabot, the team leaders, have carefully diversified a part of Harvard that five years ago was controlled almost single-handedly by Bennett. He was at once treasurer, endowment manager, financial member of the Corporation, a director for several large companies in which Harvard invests, voter of Harvard's proxies, and chairman of the University Resources Committee.

But there are still a few bugs left from the Bennett era and it's doubtful they will ever be worked out. At least one member of the Harvard Corporation (Senior Fellow Francis H. Burr '35) is a director on one of the new firms. In the financial world especially, it is difficult to find something that does not involve Burr or other members of Harvard's Governing Boards.