The wife of the late Lawrence Kadoorie, who made the family a household name in the city with his electricity utility business CLP, has died. She was 96. CLP staff received the news of Muriel Kadoorie's death yesterday, a spokesman said, but they were not sure when she died. Her son Michael Kadoorie, the chairman of CLP, had not made any announcement of her death to staff members or the public, the spokesman said. CLP, which Lawrence Kadoorie expanded into a successful company, is the larger of the two power companies in Hong Kong; the other is Power Assets. Muriel Kadoorie, n?e Gubbay, married in 1938 and bore two children, Rita and Michael. Her husband was knighted in 1974 and became the first Hong Kong-born person to be granted a peerage, in 1981. He died in 1993 at the age of 94. She was conferred an honorary doctorate by the University of Hong Kong in 1999 for 'her generosity of spirit and her willingness to donate to so many worthy causes'. In the citation, the university said Kadoorie, 'in her self-deprecating way, insists she is no more than an ordinary housewife, who had a family to look after when the children were younger, who had to go through the privations and horrors of internment during the war and now is enjoying a quiet and contented life out of the glare of society'. She had 'genuine compassion and sympathy for the less fortunate and fully supported her husband's altruism and worked together with him to bring to fruition his humane impulses', it said. The Kadoorie name is well known in the city: there is Kadoorie Avenue in Mong Kok, where she lived; the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, a 148-hectare site on the northern side of the city's highest mountain, Tai Mo Shan, in Tai Po; and the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association. The family also donated to two of HKU's facilities: the Kadoorie Institute-Shek Kong Centre and the Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building. Michael Kadoorie, 69, was ranked seventh on Hong Kong's 40 Richest list by Forbes this year. The financial magazine estimated his net worth at US$6.1 billion.
