Billionaire Israeli industrialist Idan Ofer has given $40 million to his alma mater, London Business School (LBS), to help fund the transformation of a historic London building into a new state-of-the-art educational facility, the school announced yesterday. The gift, made through the Batia and Idan Ofer Family Foundation, is the largest in the school’s history and kicks off a fundraising campaign LBS hopes will raise $160 million over the next five years.
Ofer’s gift will help transform Old Marylebone Town Hall, acquired by LBS last year, and fund construction of a new three-story building featuring six lecture theatres, a library, 35 seminar rooms, offices, staff and faculty suites, a student lounge, broadcast facilities and a new alumni center. Work on the new building, which will be named the Sammy Ofer Centre in honor of Idan Ofer’s late father, is expected to begin next year.
Ofer, who received his MBA from LBS in the 1980s and has long been a supporter of the school, is a principal in the Quantum Pacific Group, which has holdings in energy, international shipping, technology and other industries. “This project is an important step towards ensuring the school can continue to grow and prosper in the future, creating new generations of leaders who can address the challenges of business and wider society,” he said in a statement.
The new Ofer Centre, together with LBS’s Sussex Place and Taunton Place buildings, will create a triangle of educational facilities within a five minutes’ walk of one another, which LBS hopes will help create a dynamic space for students to gather and share ideas.
The larger $160 million fundraising campaign, which will have its official U.S. launch on October 3rd, will help LBS attract world-class faculty, double its scholarships offering, invest in technology and establish an unrestricted fund supporting the school’s strategic priorities.
