The steel magnate Swraj Paul, Lord Paul, who has died aged 94, fostered a reputation as a leading international philanthropist in his native India, the US and his adopted British homeland, with large charitable donations, many of which resulted in developments bearing his family name.
Among the beneficiaries of his gifts are London Zoo, where part of the children’s zoo is named in memory of his daughter Ambika, and the University of Wolverhampton, where Paul was chancellor from 1999 until his death and where the science and engineering faculty building on the Telford campus is named after his son Angad. Other establishments in Jalandhar, India, where Paul was born, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), also carry the family name. Despite the collapse of the core steel business of his Caparo group 10 years ago, the Paul family was 81st in this year’s Sunday Times “rich list”, valued at £2bn.
