Chicago Business School Gets Huge Gift

The University of Chicago's business school will get a $300 million boost to its endowment -- and a new name -- from David Booth, an investor who has tried to avoid the limelight until now.

The gift, among the largest donations ever to a U.S. university, comes as endowments have been hit hard by the financial meltdown, and many potential donors are tightening purse strings. The 61-year-old Mr. Booth, chief executive of the Dimensional Fund Advisors mutual fund, said Thursday that he will donate $300 million of his firm's stock to the business school, from which he graduated in 1971.

The Chicago school will change its name to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and use the funds to hire and retain professors, and to expand its publications, said Edward Snyder, the school's dean.

The gift represents a coming-out for Mr. Booth, who is largely unknown outside the rarefied world of academic research and in finance. In the 27 years since founding Dimensional, Mr. Booth has played a behind-the-scenes role, while his now-retired partner, Rex Sinquefield, was the public face of the company.

Mr. Booth said he is nervous about stepping into the public with the grant and namesake school. 'My life as I know it will be changing,' he said in an interview.

Mr. Booth made his money applying concepts of 'passive investing,' which eschews the research-intensive task of picking individual stocks for a strategy of holding large portfolios of hundreds of stocks that as a group better represent the overall market.

Founded in 1981, Dimensional now manages about $120 billion in assets through 300 different funds and accounts.

In the past year, Dimensional has posted mixed returns, according to data from Morningstar Inc., with some of its big funds comfortably ahead of the competition, while others lag behind. Still, it has avoided the kind of catastrophic performance that has wrecked the long-term track record of other value investors.

The gift will be a portion of the Dimensional shares held by Mr. Booth's family trust, said a University of Chicago spokesman. The university will get an income stream from the shares, he said.

Mr. Booth grew up in Kansas and, in 1969, landed at the Chicago business school, where he was a research assistant to Eugene Fama, who fathered the 'efficient markets hypothesis' that now guides modern investing.

芝

加哥大学商学院获得了大卫•布斯(David Booth)的3亿美元捐赠，也将由此获得一个新名字。



University of Chicago

参加捐赠仪式的大卫•布斯（右）与芝加哥大

学教授尤金•法玛



61岁的布斯是共同基金Dimensional Fund Advisors的首席执行长，这位投资者直到不久前还一直希望保持低调。不过周四他称，他将向他1971年毕业的这所商学院捐赠其公司3亿美元的股票。

这是美国大学有史以来获得的数额最大的捐赠之一。金融危机严重打击了捐赠，许多潜在的捐赠人都收紧了腰包。

商学院院长爱德华•施奈德(Edward Snyder)说，这所商学院将因此更名为芝加哥大学布斯商学院，并用这笔资金招聘和留住教授，并扩充其出版物。

这也是布斯的首次出手，他在学术界和金融领域之外很少为人所知。在创建Dimensional的27年里，布斯一直在幕后发挥作用，该公司抛头露面的基本是现已退休的合伙人雷克斯•辛克费尔德(Rex Sinquefield)。

布斯说，他对因捐赠和以其名字命名的商学院而走入公众视野感到紧张。他在接受采访时说，我知道，我的生活将要发生改变。

布斯的财富主要来自于采用“被动投资”的理念。这种投资理念回避了通过深入研究精选个股的办法，而是通过投资范围广泛的数百只股票，更好地反映整体市场状况。

Dimensional成立于1981年，目前通过300个不同的基金和账户管理着约1,200亿美元资产。

根据晨星公司(Morningstar Inc.)的数据，过去1年里, Dimensional的回报率参差不齐，其中一些大型基金轻松超过了竞争对手，其他一些则表现落后。不过，Dimensional避免了令其他价值型投资者一世英名付诸东流的那种灾难性表现。

芝加哥大学发言人称，布斯捐赠的将是其家族信托持有的Dimensional股票。他说，该大学将从这笔股票中获得收入流。

布斯在堪萨斯长大，1969年进入芝加哥大学商学院，成为尤金•法玛(Eugene Fama)的研究助理。法玛被称为指导现代投资的“有效市场假说”(efficient markets hypothesis)之父。