Government support over the past decade has helped put the endowments of the city-state's three leading universities — SMU, NUS and NTU — on the radar screens of money managers' institutional sales teams. Having a credible internal investment team is “relevant” to a university's fundraising efforts, but a university's ability to show that it's effectively using its endowment in pursuit of the university's mission is arguably more important, noted SMU Chief Investment Officer Teo Jwee Liang. He said that SMU engages external firms to manage its investment portfolio. The target allocations are: global publicly-listed equities, up to 40%; marketable alternatives, 20% to 25%; 10% to 15% in fixed income; 10% to 15% in real assets; and 5% to10% in private equity. Over the past year, however, the portfolio has added more equity and absolute-return strategies with low-volatility characteristics, he noted. While SMU doesn't announce endowment performance results, Mr Teo said his team compares its returns to those of similarly sized endowments in the U.S., because of the similarities in portfolio construction. SMU's March 31 fiscal year end makes for inexact comparisons with U.S. universities using a June 30 year end, but for most time periods in the short life of the SMU endowment, it would have enjoyed above-median results in that U.S. universe, he said.