Boston – Harvard University, which has educated many of the world’s wealthiest investors, is now getting its biggest single gift from one them: a $400 million donation from Wall Street hedge fund mogul John Paulson.
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The 59-year old investor, who credits his Harvard Business School education for success at his $19 billion firm Paulson & Co, said he hoped the donation to Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) would help “improve humanity.”
The gift, announced on Wednesday, is roughly equivalent to the annual gross domestic product of Venezuela.
“There is nothing more important to improve humanity than education,” Paulson said in a statement, adding “SEAS is the next frontier for Harvard, and its expanding campus in Allston promises to become the next major center of innovation.”
The donation is the third record-sized gift Harvard has received from alumni since last year, and comes two years into the Ivy League school’s five-year campaign to raise $6.5 billion in donations. The campaign has already topped $5 billion. The school’s $36.4 billion endowment, meanwhile, makes it the world’s richest university.
In 2014, hedge fund mogul Kenneth Griffin, who began trading securities as a Harvard undergraduate in the 1980s, set a record with a $150 million gift. Only a few months later, Hong Kong venture capitalists Ronnie and Gerald Chan topped that with a $350 million donation to the university’s school of public health, where Gerald earned his master’s and doctorate degrees.
The engineering and applied sciences school, which counts former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson among its graduates, will be renamed the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
“John Paulson’s extraordinary gift will enable the growth and ensure the strength of engineering and applied sciences at Harvard for the benefit of generations to come,” Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust said in a statement.
Paulson’s best-known bet against an overheated housing market before the financial crisis netted his fund $15 billion and cemented his personal fortune, now estimated by Forbes to total $11.2 billion.
While his funds’ returns have gyrated some in recent years, his flagship Paulson Partners fund has compounded at 13.6 percent a year over the last two decades, handily beating the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
In 2012, Paulson made his first prominent gift with a $100 million donation to Central Park, located close to his New York City home.
I know where I would give that money ‘when’ I have it….to yeshivas, kollelim and bnos yaakov schools here and in EY. not to some institution that doesn’t even need the money. ..
What a loser!!
#1 Right, the man who earned $19 billion dollars and gave $400 million to charity/education is a loser.
I didn’t know his mother was Jewish….well I guess the old cliche still stands.
He earned the money. He can choose to give wherever he wants.
Pity he doesn’t understand that there are bigger needs than an ivy league university that charges ridiculous amounts of money for an education and has an endowment of billions.
That’s rich coming from you. Condemning the man when you don’t know him. He is not obligated to you or anybody.
Stop acting like the judge, jury and executioner. Wipe the plank out of your own eyes.
Harvard has been described as an investment fund with a school attached. The school already has 36 billions of dollars in endowments, which is more than enough to fund any programs it wants, and needs not another cent. However, rather than donate to schools that need the money or to funds to educate poor kids, Paulson donates to the school that doesn’t need it. Harvard certainly doesn’t need a fundraising campaign, so I wonder why, exactly, they are trying to get billions more. I strongly suspect someone is benefiting from this, but I doubt it is the students.
Does anyone know whether Mr. Paulson has also given substantially to Jewish causes? I think that’s an important question to ask and to know the answer before accusing him of not supporting Jewish institutions.
Perhaps, he may not have earned the merit to support Torah charities.
While greedy leadership bankrupted Yeshiva University because of their nearsighted lust for quick cash, Harvard continues to thrive as a true beacon of knowledge. Harvard’s alumni recognize that their donated money won’t be blown into waste or someone’s personal pockets. Maybe guys like him are afraid to waste their money on institutions that are named “yeshivas” because of poor history that donations are properly invested?