According to Steve Bailey and Steven Syre in the Boston Globe Harvard has chosen a successor to Jack Meyer as president of Harvard Management Co. Mohamed El-Erian, a leading investor in emerging market bonds and recent candidate to run the International Monetary Fund, is expected to become the new manager of its $25.9 billion endowment. As the largest university endowment in the world it is a very high profile job, with high expectations given the fund’s performance:

[El-Erian] will have very large shoes to fill at Harvard Management, which has turned in among the best endowment investment performances under Meyer. Over the past decade, Harvard Management has earned an average of 16.1 percent, compared with a median return of 9.4 percent for institutional investors and 12.5 percent for the 25 largest endowments.

The university’s endowment amounted to just $4.7 billion when Meyer joined Harvard Management in 1990. It grew fivefold over the next 15 years thanks in part to rising markets but also to the superior performance by a team of managers Meyer hired.