Stanford U. Sells Shares of Its Assets to Make Up Endowment Losses

Stanford University is seeking to sell partial interests in some $5-billion worth of its hard-to-sell holdings, such as private equity and real estate, which have battered its endowment in the past year, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Stanford, which has one of the nation’s largest nonprofit endowments at $12.6-billion, is offering 10 to 20 percent shares in its illiquid investments in an effort to raise as much as $1-billion in cash. Bids are due around the end of the month.

With the market for such holdings dried up, universities that saw their endowments ravaged by risky investments have had little luck unloading them, the paper says. Stanford’s innovative approach in selling only minority interests will be closely watched by universities to see if demand has rebounded, according to the Journal.

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