Philadelphia Inquirer – The University of Pennsylvania’s endowment fund lost a lot less than other big Ivy League schools during the grim financial year ended June 30.

That’s a switch for the better at the West Philadelphia campus of the city’s biggest private employer, which trailed its peers during the financial-asset inflation of the mid-2000s.

Penn had ranked last among the 25 largest university endowments in the year ended June 30, 2008, with a 6 percent decline, according to the yearly performance numbers posted by the National Association of College and University Business Administrators.

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Seeking Alpha – Jana was recently ranked 79th in Alpha’s Hedge Fund Rankings. Jana was founded in 2001 and typically employs activist, market neutral, and long/short equity strategies in public equity markets. Rosenstein received his B.S. from Lehigh University and his MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Jana has returned 20.9% each year annualized from 2001 until 2007. Rosenstein sees Jana’s future in a strategy that uses management adjustments to force change at companies, which in turn can send shares higher.

A few months back in our hedge fund performance numbers update, we noted that Jana’s piranha fund was -19.2% for October and was -21.7% for the year at that time. Additionally, their Nirvana fund fell 13.2% in October and was down 21.9% ytd at that time. Lastly, the Jana Partners fund had a much better October than its other funds, being down 6.6% for that month, but was still down 20.4% for the year at that time. As you can see, a big chunk of its losses came solely from the month of October.

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Tags: chunk, equity strategies, hedge fund performance, jana partners, lehigh university, long short equity, losses, mba, nirvana, partners fund, performance numbers, piranha, public equity, school of business, seeking alpha, university of pennsylvania, wharton school of business, ytd