Blyth, 48, has been shaking up the management company since he became CEO in January last year. The senior management team has been overhauled while a number of traders and executives have departed.
Turnaround Plan
A disruption in leadership can be a problem if it comes in the middle of turnaround plan, said Charles Elson, a finance professor at the University of Delaware who runs the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance.
“A change agent who leaves in the middle of the change dramatically affects the ability to carry out the changes,” Elson said. “If it goes into months or even years the impetus for the change disappears.”
Harvard’s fund had an annualized five-year return of 10.5 percent, trailing peers including Yale University and Princeton University. The endowment’s 5.8 percent one-year gain through June lagged the Ivy League average by 2 percentage points.
Blyth, a former bond trader at Deutsche Bank AG who joined HMC in 2006, was in charge of overseeing internal trading of stocks, bonds and other securities prior to his promotion to CEO. His compensation was $8.3 million as managing director of public markets in 2014, according to Harvard. That’s down from $11.5 million the previous year, university tax documents show.