Harvard Management taps head of internal management

BOSTON, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Harvard Management Company, which invests the Ivy League school's $35 billion endowment, on Thursday appointed an insider to oversee its internal investment management effort.

Stephen Blyth, who joined Boston-based HMC two years ago to help rebuild a depleted fixed income team, will now also be in charge of assessing new as well as current opportunities internally, Harvard University said.

Blyth, who earned his doctorate in statistics from Harvard, will be head of Internal Management, a new position, and also managing director of the International Fixed Income team for the country's largest endowment.

Unlike most universities, including its rival Yale, Harvard uses both inside and outside managers to invest its money, sticking with a model that has worked extremely well in the last years. The university has often put money with former HMC employees who now run hedge funds.

In fiscal 2007, Harvard's endowment returned 23 percent, and it is expected to have put in another very strong performance in the face of tumbling markets in the year that ended in June. The university has not announced those returns yet. (Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; editing by Gunna Dickson)