Investment Policy At The Hewlett Foundation Case Study

701 Words2 Pages

Investment Policy at the Hewlett Foundation This case examines investments by Hewlett Foundation (HF). William R. Hewlett, his wife Flora, and their oldest son, Walter, established the foundation in 1966. At year-end 2004, the foundation was among the eight largest U.S. private foundations by asset size, with $6.4 billion. HF consists primarily of HP and Agilent 3 stock. The foundation focused on six grant programs, which are: conflict resolution, education, the environment, performing arts, population, and U.S.-Latin American relations and other special programs. The foundation’s source of income was return on investment assets. The foundation had an investment committee, which approved asset allocation policies and managed a number …show more content…

Hoagland, the chief investment officer and his team were confident that Sirius could deliver superior returns. The investment team at HF is asking the investment committee to improve the expected return on the foundation’s portfolio by changing this exposure into equities, nominal bonds, and TIPS using return overlay strategies. These strategies will allow HF to take the excess return, or “alpha”, in the absolute return portfolio and cover it on the expected return on a balanced portfolio of equities and long-term bonds. The third is to commit up to 5% of assets to a global distressed real state investment fund with which the foundation has invested in the past. HF used a guideline of paying out annually 5.25% of the three-year moving average value of investment assets, which was about the same with the spending policy at other large private foundations. HF changed its asset allocation policy as a result of modifying capital market assumptions and new investment opportunities. Before, Hoagland initiated a new asset allocation policy. The policy significantly reduced the allocation to U.S. public equities (from 50% to 30%) and significantly increased the allocation to equities in foreign developed markets, private equity, and real

More about Investment Policy At The Hewlett Foundation Case Study

Open Document