Bain Capital Real Estate Formed to Manage Harvard's Assets

Dan Cummings will be the managing director and head of real estate at Bain Capital Real Estate.

NEW YORK CITY—The team of 22 people responsible for Harvard endowment’s $3.4 billion real estate portfolio will be moving to Bain Capital, effective February 1, 2018. Dan Cummings, currently the managing director and head of real estate at Harvard’s endowment, will maintain his same title but at Bain Capital. He had helped found the real estate group at Harvard in 2010.

“Harvard will be a client with a separate account. We will have responsibility for the existing direct real estate investment portfolio that we created while at Harvard,” says Cummings in a GlobeSt.com interview.

Cummings explains Harvard is moving to a generalist model, and a team of generalists will be managing and executing the real estate investment strategy for Harvard for investments in the future going forward. Although Harvard had a pre-existing relationship with Bain, it did not include the real estate sector.

The move is a major coup for Bain Capital, which had not previously been involved in the real estate investment class.