After years of subpar results at Harvard Management Co., three high-level managers have exited the $32.7 billion endowment and the university is searching for new leadership.

Apoorva K. Koticha, 48, among the highest-paid traders at Harvard Management in 2011, has left, according to two people familiar with the matter. News of his departure comes a week after Jane Mendillo, chief executive officer of the university’s investment company since July 2008, said she will resign at the end of the year. Mark McKenna, 43, a money manager at the endowment, moved to BlackRock Inc. this month to start an event- driven hedge fund. Since April 2013, Harvard Management has also parted ways with two heads of its private-equity unit.

“When the team posts mediocre records too many years in a row, the coach goes,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “And, not far behind her, the assistant coaches.”

Mendillo, 55, has promoted from within to build her top management, elevating Stephen Blyth and Andrew Wiltshire as co- heads of investing. The endowment is considering internal candidates as well as outside executives to fill the CEO role, said James F. Rothenberg, chairman of Harvard Management’s board. As the fund embarks on the search, its challenge will be to attract talent to restore its reputation as a leading endowment manager.

Liking Model

The board will serve as the search committee for a new CEO, Rothenberg said. Directors aren’t seeking to change Harvard’s approach to investing, which combines using staff for internal trading and farming out money to external managers. The endowment employs about 200 people.

“We like the model we have,” Rothenberg, who is also a member of Harvard Corp., the university’s board of trustees, said in an interview yesterday.

Harvard University, which helped redefine how college endowments manage money through the use of non-traditional asset classes, has lagged behind the rest of the Ivy League since the credit crisis as private equity, real estate and emerging markets faltered. Boston-based Harvard Management oversees the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school’s endowment, which is the world’s largest.

Columbia, Penn

Harvard’s endowment posted annual average gains of 1.7 percent in the five years ended June 30, 2013, according to data compiled by Charles Skorina & Co. That compares with annual returns of 6.8 percent at Columbia University, 5.4 percent at University of Pennsylvania and 3.3 percent at Yale University.

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