Hong Kong has become the biggest overseas donor to a famous British university’s fundraising campaign, the Post has learned.
Philanthropists from the city have donated a total of £34 million (HK$381.6 million) – almost 6 per cent of the HK$6.7 billion donations King’s College London collected from 88 regions across the world during the campaign started in 2010 – according to the college.
The amount was the largest from any region outside the UK.
That came amid a trend for local tycoons increasingly offering eye-catching sums to overseas universities.
Among the local philanthropists was luxury goods retailing entrepreneur Dickson Poon, whose donation of HK$224 million to the 187-year-old college’s law school in 2012 made big headlines.
The school was subsequently renamed after Poon.
Lau Ming-wai, Youth Commission chairman and son of property tycoon Joseph Lau Luen-hung, also donated HK$67 million to create the Lau China Institute.