Harvard’s top six endowment fund managers together earned more than $100 million in salaries and bonuses for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2003, according to figures released yesterday by the Harvard Management Corporation (HMC).

The top two earners—Maurice Samuels and David R. Mittelman—earned $35.1 million and $34.1 million respectively, more than doubling the amounts earned by last year’s top two earners, who took home almost $18 million apiece.

The HMC—the group responsible for managing Harvard’s $19.3 billion endowment—compensates fund managers with a fixed salary, a neutral bonus and a performance-related bonus.

The HMC fund managers’ usually take home a base salary of roughly $400,000, and their annual neutral bonuses are typically in the $100,000-range.

Samuels’ and Mittelman’s dramatic salaries were thus related to last year’s bullish performance of the endowment, which earned 12.5 percent.

Harvard’s performance was four times better than the average return on university endowments. [See related story, page 8]

At $19.3 billion, the endowment is now the largest it has been in the University’s 368-year history.

“This compensation deal is a good deal for Harvard,” said Meyer, one of the top six earners in the HMC. “If we had used external managers and gotten the same results, it would have cost twice as much.”

Unlike most other Ivy League schools, Harvard manages its own endowment.

Due to this year’s considerable bonuses, HMC will consider implementing a new maximum annual compensation for fund managers, Harvard Treasurer D. Ronald Daniel told the Associated Press last night.

It was not clear last night whether these proposed changes would prevent bonuses as large as those Samuels and Mittelman took home this year.

The compensation numbers are usually released in November or December, but Meyer said yesterday that this year’s release was affected by the size of the payout.

“Our numbers are big this year, and we reviewed them carefully and more carefully, and talked about it at several meetings,” Meyer said.

The HMC’s compensation system has been criticized by alumni, who say the group’s earnings policy is too generous.

“Back in the ’90s, there was concern when someone reached one million,” said William Strauss ’69, one of seven members of the Class of 1969 who sent a letter to University President Lawrence H. Summers in November protesting last year’s compensation numbers. “Now it’s 35? What’s the limit? If I were these people, I would give back 30 percent of what Harvard gives me as a gesture.”