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Endowment Scrolly


Four Steps to an Oil Well
3,383 disclosures

Each dot represents one organization in one year of Harvard’s tax filings. The same fund appears again for every year it stayed on the list.

The list keeps getting shorter

394 in fiscal 2016. 258 in fiscal 2025. Over the same decade the endowment grew to $57 billion and moved roughly 90 percent of its money to outside managers.

Most are registered abroad

737 in the Cayman Islands. 304 in Brazil. Delaware, in black, is the largest single home — but only 1,347 of the 3,383 sit in any U.S. state.

A few names do the heavy lifting

Harvard’s own shells account for 1,122 of the lines. Bain Capital entities, 494. Gordian Bioenergy, 333. The rest are spread across 148 other firms.

Three of them are energy funds

In the fiscal 2025 filing, three vehicles are run by firms that invest in oil and gas. Harvard’s reported share of their assets came to $897.7 million.

One oil-related firm

Harvard’s tax return names the first three links. The last two come from securities and investment-adviser filings.

Others

Some of these funds can be traced directly to companies you would know, using securities filings, corporate registries and foreign regulators.

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