Texas’s $92 Billion Endowment Board Meets Sept. 24 Under Looser New Investment Limits

The nine-member board that invests $92.5 billion for Texas’s public universities meets Sept. 24 in Austin, its first meeting since new rules took effect letting it borrow more, hold more assets it cannot sell quickly, and put more money with any single outside manager.

The University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company is a nonprofit corporation the University of Texas regents hired in 1996 to invest money they control — chiefly the Permanent University Fund, worth $44.5 billion and backed by 2.1 million acres of West Texas land, and a $28.8 billion pool holding university endowments. It sent $2.7 billion to the two university systems last year. Texas A&M takes a third of the land fund’s payout and names two of the nine directors, but its own endowment is managed elsewhere.

The board approved the new rules in June and they took effect Sept. 1. The borrowing ceiling rose from 110 percent of net assets to 115. The share of the two big endowment pools allowed to sit in holdings that cannot be sold quickly rose from 75 percent to 80, with a temporary 85 percent available if stocks fall sharply. A limit holding any one outside manager to 3 percent of a strategy was deleted outright, and the overall per-manager ceiling rose from 6 percent to 7.5.

Staff gave the board its reasons: managers are consolidating, the funds keep growing, there are fewer public companies to buy, stock indexes are concentrated in a handful of names, and beating public markets has gotten harder. The same package created a “strategic holdings” bucket for one-off opportunities, capped at 10 percent; shortened the maturity of the Treasury holdings because stocks and bonds no longer reliably move in opposite directions; and gave gold its own line for the first time.

Sept. 24 itself is mostly housekeeping. The main vote hands out committee seats, a step usually taken at the June annual meeting but skipped this year, after two directors left in August and two arrived. Reports follow from the audit, investment risk and cyber risk committees, and the directors will go behind closed doors for a computer-security briefing, as they have every September since 2023. Returns for the year that ended Aug. 31 have not been published; through July the endowments were up about 12 percent.

Meeting at a glance

Board members

• James C. “Rad” Weaver — chairman; San Antonio; chief executive, CW Interests; UT regent.
• Jay Graham — vice chairman; Bryan; chief executive, Spur Energy Partners; A&M regent.
• Janiece Longoria — vice chairman for policy; Houston; attorney; UT regent.
• David Baggett — Houston; managing partner, Opportune LLP; A&M regent.
• Christina Melton Crain — Dallas; attorney; chief executive, Unlocking Doors; UT regent.
• Howard Berk — senior adviser, BDT & MSD Partners.
• Dwight Scott — executive vice chairman, Quantum Capital.
• Lou Paletta — San Antonio; founding partner, Kildare Partners.
• Terry Hull — University of Texas System executive vice chancellor and operating chief.

Roster from the company’s board page, checked September 18 and cross-checked against the University of Texas and Texas A&M regents’ own pages and the governor’s appointment releases. No seat is vacant and no term has expired. Two entries carry caveats: no posted document names Terry Hull or Lou Paletta as appointees, and their August 2026 arrival is inferred from the company’s own list of former directors, from a University of Texas regents agenda item on unnamed appointments, and from Hull’s start date as executive vice chancellor. Paletta is a Texas A&M Foundation trustee, not an A&M regent, despite claims to the contrary circulating online. The board page also carries stale committee titles for the two university systems’ own boards. Richard Hall has been president, chief executive and chief investment officer since 2023. Staff contact: Joanna Barrett, 512-225-1600.