Harvard's top money investors were well rewarded for their billion-dollar efforts last year, according to figures released by the Harvard Management Company (HMC).

Bonuses for two of HMC's highest-paid managers reached the eight-figure mark, and three other bonuses given by HMC topped $5 million.

HMC's highest paid investment professionals for the last year was Jeffery Larson, who earned a $16.7 million after an impressive performance with foreign stocks, and bond specialist David Mittelman, who was paid $10.7 million.

By contrast, Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine was paid less than $350,000 last year.

HMC's chief executive, Jack Meyer, said that the figures represented incentives based on performance--"not a salary."

"Every manager receives a modest salary," Meyer said. "The [five highest paid managers] earn that much compensation because they have added tremendous value for Harvard."

Performance bonuses are based on individual results by investment managers over a multi-year period. Managers do not receive bonuses solely because the markets see increases.

"If the S&P 500 index of stocks goes up 20 percent, the manager's goes up 20 percent, but he receives no bonus. He would earn only if he outperforms the benchmark," Meyer said.

Meyer himself earned slightly over $2 million in bonuses this year.

HMC manages and invests all of the Harvard's funds. Its top five professionals--also including Phillip Gross earning $8.7 million, Robert Atchinson earning $7.3 million and Frank Dunau earning $5.8 million-- have invested Harvard's money extremely successfully, outside experts have concluded.

In the past five years, the group has added $5.9 billion to Harvard's endowment and surpassed market benchmarks by $2.1 billion.

Their performance helped increase the endowment to $19.2 billion as of June 30, a 32.2 percent annual return and a $12.2 billion increase since the $7 billion endowment of 1995.

"To get that kind of spread over five years in bonds is very impressive," Richard Charlton, president of New England Pension Consultants--a Cambridge firm that tracks investment performance, told The Boston Globe.

Meyer said it is appropriate that HMC managers make more money than other Harvard administrators who work more closely with the school.

"It's an entirely different business," said Meyer. "We are not an academic institution. Our investment managers come in from outside firms and [transfer] out too."

The HMC bonuses are in line with those paid out in the business world. Harvard's in-house approach lowers overall endowment management

costs to about half of the cost of outside management. As a nonprofit subsidiary of Harvard, HMC is required to report the compensations of its five highest-paid employees, whereas nonprofits that use outside investment managers do not have to report the salaries of the individual managers overseeing their funds.

Fiscal Year 2000's 32.2 percent return was the second highest since Harvard Management Company was created in 1974.