2014-09-08
HKT 15:05
A venture capital group set up by property tycoon Ronnie Chan and his brother Gerald has given a US$350 million donation to Harvard University.
It's the largest gift the university's ever received.
The donation to the School of Public Health by the Morningside Foundation is unrestricted.
But the 101-year-old school, with just over 400 faculty and 1,000 full-time students, will be renamed the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - after the name of their late father who founded Hang Lung Group.
The school said the donation will support efforts including increased financial aid for students, loan forgiveness for graduates who work in underserved areas, new classrooms, and seed money for pathbreaking research too novel to win support from other funders.
The gift dwarfs the previous record of US$150 million donation that hedge fund manager and alumnus Kenneth Griffin gave to Harvard earlier this year, most of it for financial aid.
But it's not the biggest ever donation to any American university -- former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg still holds that record for donating US$1.1 billion in total, to his alma mater Johns Hopkins University.
http://m.rthk.hk/news/20140908/1035683.htm
