Broadcom co-founder to donate $100 million
Saying he is ready to return to philanthropy after years of personal crises, Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III said Wednesday that he would give $100 million over the next five years to support education and other charitable interests.
Nicholas said that details of his financial commitments would be announced in a few weeks, but that those benefiting from his largess would include youth sports, medical research and troops in the Middle East.
In December, he formed a philanthropic foundation that has started giving money to a variety of causes, such as a youth basketball league and Habitat for Humanity to house Iraq war veterans. In 2004, he donated $10 million to St. Margaret’s Episcopal School, which his children attend.
Since he left Broadcom in 2003, Nicholas’ life has been blotched by a bitter divorce and child-custody battles, health problems, allegations of involvement with drugs and prostitutes and federal investigations into his role in alleged stock manipulation at the Irvine chip maker.
The billionaire, along with Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos, dean of UC Irvine’s engineering school, and others, said his donations would help create interactive television and computer programs enabling immigrants to study business skills, inner-city students to learn from master teachers and parents to watch their children compete in recorded sports events.
