![](https://panorama.am/news_images/690/2068749_3/f5c59af32c2e50_5c59af32c2e8f.thumb.jpg)
Hedge fund founder David Harding gives record £100 million to Cambridge University
David Harding, the billionaire founder of hedge fund firm Winton Group, donated 100 million pounds ($130 million) to the University of Cambridge, the biggest single private gift to a U.K. college from a British philanthropist, Bloomberg reports.
More than three-quarters of the money from Harding and his wife will provide full scholarships for about 100 distinguished doctoral students, the university said Tuesday in a statement. The rest will support undergraduate students at Britain’s second-oldest university.
“Claudia and I are very happy to make this gift to Cambridge to help to attract future generations of the world’s outstanding students to research and study there,” Harding, 57, said in the statement.
The gift is a significant sum for U.K. philanthropy, representing more than 10 percent of new money that universities across the country raised in the 2016-17 academic year. And it comes as the U.K.’s pending divorce from the European Union threatens funding for academic institutions. The nation’s universities collectively received 767 million pounds a year on average from 2007 to 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The gift surpasses the $120 million that his U.S. peer Jaffray Woodriff, a co-founder of Quantitative Investment Management, gave last month to the University of Virginia. Yet the giving gets even bigger among U.S. hedge fund billionaires. In 2014, Citadel Advisors’ Ken Griffin gifted $150 million to his alma mater, Harvard University. A year later, John Paulson donated $400 million to Harvard’s engineering school.
Harding’s gift also exceeds the 75 million pounds that British venture capitalist Michael Moritz donated in 2012 to the University of Oxford, the U.K.’s oldest university. Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, hold the title for the biggest donation to a U.K. university after giving $210 million to Cambridge in 2001 to fund a scholarship program.
Newsfeed
Videos
![Armenian expert: U.S. stance on Karabakh remains unchanged](https://panorama.am/video_images/10/29832_3/f63f377289dd27_63f377289dd67.jpg)
![Premature births increase in Artsakh due to stress](https://panorama.am/video_images/10/29734_3/f63e4c403c7942_63e4c403c7981.png)
![Snow-covered Yerevan](https://panorama.am/video_images/10/29340_3/f63bbd3ac5a5a7_63bbd3ac5a5e7.png)
![Gegham Stepanyan calls for sanctions against criminal Azerbaijan](https://panorama.am/video_images/10/29163_3/f639b0806e7fc4_639b0806e8003.jpg)
![Memorial plaque honoring Yeghishe Charents inaugurated in Yerevan](https://panorama.am/video_images/10/28907_3/f6385b8af9dde1_6385b8af9de21.jpg)