Hong Kong family makes largest donation to Harvard
The family of Gerald Chan, a Harvard-educated investor, is donating $350 million to the university’s School of Public Health, the largest gift in the 378-year history of the U.S.’s richest university. As the WSJ’s Douglas Belkin reports:
China, the world’s biggest exporter of foreign students to the U.S., has become a large source of donations for the Ivy League. In July, SOHO China Chief Executive Zhang Xin and her husband, Pan Shiyi, signed a $15 million gift agreement with Harvard University as part of their $100 million endowment to send underprivileged Chinese children to elite universities around the world.
In 2010, Lei Zhang, the founder and managing partner of Hillhouse Capital Management, said he would give $8,888,888 to Yale University, which marked the largest gift to the Yale School of Management by a graduate of the school.
Mr. Chan, born in Hong Kong, is a director of Hong Kong property developer Hang Lung Group Ltd.0010.HK -1.25%, where his brother Ronnie Chan serves as chairman. Together, they are ranked as the 17th richest in Hong Kong by Forbes in January with a net worth estimated at $3 billion.
At Harvard, he pursued graduate work in radiological physics and radiobiology in the 1970s. He said he is giving the money to the School of Public Health because a teacher there brought the life sciences alive. In 1984, he pivoted to investing and two years later founded Morningside Group, a private-equity and venture investment group focused on biotech, cancer research and technology in North America, Asia and Europe. It has successful investments in such companies as cancer-therapy firm Biovex and New York-listed Chinese online entertainment portal YY.com.
Source www.wsj.com
In July, SOHO China Chief Executive Zhang Xin and her husband, Pan Shiyi, signed a $15 million gift agreement with Harvard University as part of their $100 million endowment to send underprivileged Chinese children to elite universities around the world. Harvard is already filled to capacity with underprivileged Chinese Students. As generous as this gift is I think that it is only fair to offer that gift to all underprivileged potential students regardless of their ethnicity!! That is the right thing to do! Somehow these “generous gifts” seem like a hostile takeover of one of America’s Best Universities. Very rich Americans, esp. the tony Harvard Business School Graduates need to step up to the plate and share some of that money. Unfortunately, the American Biotech Venture Capitalist Harvard MBA who I worked for was all ego, extremely selfish, greedy beyond comprehension and very cheap = he is a despicable human being and a tremendous disappointment to many!! 🙁 Despite the fact that this left a bad taste in my mouth (so to speak), I know that many American VC’s out there are not like that and really care about the state of the world and human kind so they should join together and donate the same amount of money for the underprivileged American Students!! 🙂
Harvard University Crimson Fight Song
Today, I went to the beachfront with my children. I found a
sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell to her ear and screamed.
There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She
never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely off topic but I had to tell someone!