The cumulative return since 2019 was 104.6%.
The University of Helsinki gained an 18.1% return on its financial securities investments in 2024. Since the beginning of 2019, when the current investment strategy was adopted, the average annual return has been 12.7%. This cumulative return since 2019 was 104.6%.
The investments were valued at 789 million Euros at the end of 2024. Approximately 95% of these investments were subject to significant daily trading, and thereby convertible into cash quickly and at known prices.
The investment strategy relies on diversifying into equity shares in thousands of companies and more than a thousand bonds around the world, maintaining low costs, and mitigating climate change. The investments' Total Expense Ratio (TER) was below 0.1% per annum. The carbon footprint of the owned companies was around half of their benchmark.
"The University of Helsinki has been investing for more than 250 years. We trust scientific evidence - including when we make investments - and try to avoid becoming distracted by fads. In the long run, owning slices of thousands of value-creating businesses all over the world, combined with reasonable costs, has been an almost unbeatable strategy", states Chief Investment Officer Anders Ekholm.
"The investments' significant growth in value, combined with their excellent liquidity, increasingly safeguard that the University is able to distribute returns for spending in a way that is coherent and treats different generations equivalently," Chief Financial Officer Marjo Berglund summarizes.
A third-party portfolio report including complete holdings as of year-end 2024 can be found at our Financial Securities Investments website.
