2021年经济学人 一代投资大师留下的遗产(1)（在线收听）

David Swensen

大卫·斯文森

The holly and the ivy

冬青和常春藤

The legacy of an influential investor

一位投资大师留下的遗产

Starting in the1980s, the endowments of a handful of big American universities began to divert their investments away from publicly traded equities and bonds towards "alternative" assets, such as venture capital and private equity. David Swensen, who died on May 5th aged 67, perfected the approach. Referred to variously as the endowment, Yale or Swensen model, it has since been copied—by family offices, sovereign-wealth funds and, more recently, by big pension funds.

从20世纪80年代开始，美国几所大型大学的捐赠基金开始将投资从公开交易的股票和债券转向“另类”资产，如风险资本和私募股权。大卫·斯文森于5月5日去世，享年67岁，他对这一方式进行了完善，被称为捐赠模式、耶鲁模式或者斯文森模式，后来被家族理财室、主权财富基金以及最近被大型养老基金所模仿。

In 1985 Mr Swensen was persuaded by James Tobin, a Nobel-prizewinning Yale economist, to give up a lucrative career on Wall Street to return to his former university to run its investment office. Yale's endowment was then worth around $1bn. By the middle of last year the figure had risen to $31bn. Even this astonishing growth understates Mr Swensen's influence. He was responsible for developing a stream of talented asset managers at Yale. And in two best-selling books, he set down his investment philosophy for a wider audience.

1985年，在诺贝尔奖得主、耶鲁大学经济学家詹姆斯·托宾的劝说下，斯文森放弃了在华尔街高薪的职业生涯，回到他以前的大学管理其投资办公室。当时耶鲁的捐赠基金价值约10亿美元。到去年年中，这一数字已升至310亿美元。即便是如此惊人的增长也低估了斯文森先生的影响力。他负责在耶鲁培养出一批优秀的资产经理。在两本畅销书中，他向更广大的读者阐述了自己的投资哲学。

Three pillars of this thinking stand out. The first concerns time horizon. Because endowments have obligations stretching far into the future, they can take a longterm view. They can sacrifice the ease of trading in public markets for the better returns promised in private equity. By doing so, they can earn an illiquidity premium—a reward for giving up the ability to sell out easily.

这一思想有三个突出支柱。第一个是时间范围。因为捐赠基金的义务可以延伸到很远的未来，它们可以从长远来看。它们可以牺牲公开市场交易的便利性，换取私人股本承诺的更高回报。通过这样做，他们可以获得非流动性溢价——对轻易放弃出售能力的奖励。

The second pillar concerns information. It is hard to find mispriced stocks in the public markets, because news about listed companies travels fast and is quickly incorporated into prices. But investors in private markets who do their homework are more likely to be rewarded. That is because reliable data and analysis are much harder to come by.

第二个支柱是信息。在公开市场上很难找到定价错误的股票，因为有关上市公司的消息传播得很快，很快就会被计入股价。但在私人市场上，做足功课的投资者更有可能获得回报。这是因为可靠的数据和分析很难获得。