Samuel Tak Lee spent decades building a vast real estate empire that easily makes him one of the wealthiest people from Hong Kong. And now that he’s achieved such success, he’s helping others to follow a similar path by supporting the schools he attended.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced on Thursday that it had received a gift of $118 million from Lee. The donation, one of the largest in the school’s history, will be used to establish a real estate entrepreneurship lab focused on China.
The gift will also be used to fund fellowships for U.S. and international students, support research on sustainable real estate development and urbanization, and make the lab’s curriculum available online.
“This is a period of tremendous change and opportunity for entrepreneurs in China and around the world,” Lee said in statement. “By cultivating a long-term perspective, real estate professionals can create even greater value for themselves and for society based on responsible, sustainable strategies.”
Lee was ranked No. 19 on this year’s list of Hong Kong’s wealthiest people. Although he tends to maintain a low-profile, rarely responding to questions from the press, he is known to have made a number of unannounced donations in the past. One of the very few made public was a $9 million gift to Hong Kong’s Diocesan Boys’ School in 2007.
Lee was a student at DBS between 1951 and 1958. He went on to earn two degrees from MIT: a bachelor’s degree in 1962 and a master’s in 1964, both in civil and environmental engineering. After finishing his studies, he returned to Hong Kong to join Prudential Enterprise, the real estate company founded by his father and a cousin. One of the company’s main assets is the Prudential Hotel in the Jordan section of Hong Kong.
Lee’s most prominent acquisition was his purchase of London’s historic Langham Estate for a reported $75 million in 1994. Since then, he built up his holdings to about 14 acres between the neighborhoods of Soho and Mayfair.
Son Samarthur Li has been following in dad’s footsteps by developing a number of buildings in Japan, such as the V28 building in Tokyo’s Omotesando district.
Both father and son were ordered to pay a record $160 million to Li’s ex-wife in 2012 as part of their divorce settlement, but an appeal court later reduced the award to $53 million.
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