Stephen Schwarzman, head of Blackstone Group LP, has given 150 million pounds ($188 million) to the University of Oxford, the latest in a string of mega-donations to higher learning.
The contribution is the largest to the university since at least the Renaissance period, according to a University of Oxford statement. The money will help pay for a new humanities building and for the creation of an institute for the study of the ethics of artificial intelligence, with features including a 500-seat concert hall and a 250-seat auditorium.
The ethics institute “won’t just use the humanities, which are an unusual asset of Oxford,” Schwarzman said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Wednesday. “We’ll use the other major parts of the university. If you can bring all that to bear, we’ll have better outcomes.”
It’s the latest big donation from Schwarzman, who emerged as a major philanthropist in 2008 with a $100 million gift to the New York Public Library. In October, he gave $350 million to help establish a college of computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His name will also be on a campus center at Yale University, and he created the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua University in Beijing to educate future global leaders about China.
Fundraising Efforts
The donation is unusual for U.K. universities, whose fundraising efforts trail their counterparts in the U.S. When hedge fund manager David Harding gave 100 million pounds to Cambridge University in February, it was at the time the biggest single private gift to a U.K. college from a British philanthropist. The nation’s universities have collectively received about $1 billion a year on average from donors since 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Schwarzman’s gift also exceeds the 75 million pounds that British venture capitalist Michael Moritz donated in 2012 to the University of Oxford. Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, hold the title for the biggest private donation to a U.K. university after giving $210 million to Cambridge in 2001 to fund a scholarship program.
Money to Spare
Schwarzman, 72, still has change to spare with a fortune of $15.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Since founding Blackstone in 1985 with former Lehman Brothers chief executive Peter Peterson, he’s collected more than $5 billion alone from a combination of stock sales, dividends and compensation. Blackstone is now the world’s biggest wealth manager, with more than $500 billion of assets under management by the end of March, according to its website.
Teaching in Oxford dates back to at least 1096, according to the university’s website. It was formally recognized by the early 13th century and has educated 27 British prime ministers, including Theresa May and her potential successor Boris Johnson. Oxford has an endowment fund with almost 3.5 billion pounds of assets under management, delivering a return of 8.3% over the past three years.
Schwarzman said Brexit won’t affect the work his gift is intended to foster.
“Things in the short term are not nearly as important as what we’re trying to do in the long term,” he said. “From my perspective on this gift, what’s important is we set up the right structure for 100 years, 200 years.”