The U of T Asset Management division was defending itself last week against a series of Globe and Mail articles claiming that the university has lost $400 million in the past year.

The three consecutive Globe articles reported that the director of U of T Asset Management (UTAM), Donald Lindsey, would be leaving for a new job at George Washington University in Washington D.C. at the end of March, and that his departure may have had something to do with UTAM’s poor investment performance since its creation in 2000.

Felix Chee, the university’s vice-president of business affairs and chief financial officer, said “there’s no connection between the endowment and Donald Lindsey’s departure. He’s been instrumental in setting up UTAM; we really regret that he’s going.”

UTAM was established in 2000 to oversee the investment of the U of T’s financial assets, including its billion-dollar endowment and two-billion-dollar pension fund. Mr. Lindsey was hired from the University of Virginia to be UTAM’s first director. He was unavailable for comment last week.

UTAM’s investments lost more than nine per cent over the past year, more than almost any other university’s. Administration officials, however, were downplaying the numbers.

“It’s a matter of perspective,” said Shelley Romoff, U of T Public Affairs,

Mr. Chee agreed. “The S & P 500 index lost 14 per cent last year,” he said “…we lost nine per cent. We’re doing better than the market as a whole.”

A press release on UTAM’s website (www.utam.utoronto.ca) appeared on Friday afternoon to “clarify” statements made in the Globe and Mail’s stories.

“As a result of the worldwide bear market in equities, U of T’s endowment and pension funds, with their higher than average equity proportion, have suffered more than most funds,” the release stated. It also placed the losses at $320 million, not $400 million as reported by the Globe.

Both university officials and UTAM maintains that there have been no leaks to the press, and that they have no idea where Globe reporters Andrew Willis and Paul Waldie got their information.

“There has been no conversation between the university or UTAM and the Globe,” said Vice-President Chee.

The UTAM press release, signed by all the senior staff at UTAM except Mr. Lindsey, also said “no one that we are aware of spoke to Mr. Willis, Mr. Waldie or any other representative of the press.”

Mr Waldie would only say when contacted that he and Mr. Willis had spoken to “a lot” of people, both within UTAM and the university.

Asked to comment on Mr. Lindsey’s performance at UTAM, officials at George Washington University did not return calls.

Vice-president Chee wished to stress that short-term losses were not of great concern to the university, and that UTAM’s job was always to think in the long term.

“We’re thinking in terms of decades here. The one-year number is interesting but irrelevant.”