Cambridge university receives record UK donation

The founder of Winton, one of the world’s largest quantitative investing firms, has given £100 million (US$130 million) to the University of Cambridge in a record for a British donor, writes Andrew Jack for the Financial Times.

David Harding, a graduate of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, who worked as a futures trader before founding AHL and then Winton in 1997, gave the money through his David and Claudia Harding Foundation to support postgraduate and undergraduate students.

The grant is a big boost to a £500 million fundraising drive announced by the university last autumn, to increase financial and wider support for students at Cambridge, and it is the largest to the university after Bill Gates’ US$210 million contribution to create the Gates Cambridge Scholarship Programme in 2000 and the biggest by a donor from the UK. Cambridge University’s total endowment – excluding the assets of the individual colleges – is one of the largest in the country at £3.2 billion. Oxford is close behind on £3.1 billion.
Full report on the Financial Times site