SPECIAL
Thaksin will do well if he can match history of philanthropy
"The Bt1-billion sum may be too small compared to what his family earned from the tax-free Bt73-billion Shin sale."Chamlong Srimuang PM’s former mentor
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Amid political unrest and growing criticism from opposition parties, the public and the media for his family’s dubious sale of a 49.6-per-cent stake in Shin Corp, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has said he will give an additional Bt1 billion back to society through the Thaicom Foundation he set up to prompte education in rural provinces.
However, his former mentor, Chamlong Srimuang, suggested that the Bt1-billion sum might be too small when compared with the Bt73 billion his family earned from the tax-free sale. Chamlong came up with the suggested figure of Bt26 billion – one-third of the total sum received for selling Shin to Temasek Holdings of Singapore.
Philanthropy is a tradition of rich people in the West, but after World War II a handful of Japanese also climbed on the bandwagon. Their example may give Thaksin some inspiration on how to return assets to society.
Here are a number of billionaires who take their support for charity very seriously.
Bill Gates was not named this year’s “Person of the Year” by Time magazine for nothing. He and his wife Melinda set up a foundation in 2000 to reduce inequities in global health and education.
The couple plans to donate the lion’s share of their money to charity. Their children will reportedly be left with just 0.02 per cent of Gates’s fortune, or about US$10 million (Bt395 million) each.
The Gates foundation supported a research project for HIV-immunity injections for people worldwide, including children in northern Thailand – Thaksin’s home turf.
The foundation’s endowment stands at $28.8 billion and the
total grant commitments since inception amount to $9.2 billion.
John D Rockefeller once said: “The person who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won’t succeed; you must have a larger ambition.”
He also said that the power to make money is a gift from God, “to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind.”
His foundation, founded in 1913, focused on public health. It developed the vaccine to prevent yellow fever and funded the modernisation of agriculture in the developing world. It has $3.2 billion in assets and in 2004 provided $124 million in grants and fellowships.
“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do,” said carmaker Henry Ford.
And so his put his money where his mouth is.
With net assets of about Bt11.4 billion, the Ford Foundation works to reduce poverty and injustice, promote democratic values, increase international cooperation and advance human achievements.
John D MacArthur was one of the three wealthiest men in America at the time of his death in 1978. One of seven children, MacArthur was born in an impoverished coal-producing area of Pennsylvania. His wife, Catherine T was one of the five children born to Irish immigrants who had settled in Chicago.
In 1978, the couple established a foundation in their name. Today, with total assets of $5 billion, it provides grants aimed at strengthening institutions, improving public policy and providing information to the citizenry, primarily through support for public interest media.
Born in Budapest and a survivor of the Nazi occupation, George Soros, founder of the Open Society Institute, has been active as a philanthropist since 1979 when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. In 1956, Soros moved to the United States, where he began to accumulate a large fortune through an international investment fund and created a network of philanthropic projects in more than 50 countries worldwide.
Soros rivals the great philanthropists of the 1890s – Rockefeller, Carnegie and Julius Rosenwald, the founder of Sears Roebuck department store.
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