UC Irvine Receives $1.28-Million Gift

Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III has given $1.28 million to UC Irvine’s Intercollegiate Athletics Department, his second major donation since he hit the jackpot when the Irvine maker of cable-modem chips went public last year.

The gift, the largest ever received by the department in its 34-year history, will be used to support the crew program.

Nicholas, who competed against UCI as a member of UCLA’s crew team in 1981 and 1982, said he hopes the money will help UCI develop a national championship rowing team.

“I personally believe crew is a sport that gets very little glory,” Nicholas said Wednesday. “With my philanthropic activities, I tend to look for kind of the unsung heroes.”

In January, Nicholas, who is president and chief executive of the Irvine-based Broadcom, donated $1.3 million to the expansion of South Coast Repertory theater. Neither the theater group nor the athletics department solicited funds from him, Nicholas said.

“With UCI, it took me a while to even get in touch with someone who could accept the money,” he said.

Nicholas and partner Henry Samueli are two of Orange County’s wealthiest executives, worth more than $1.8 billion each.

Each grossed $6.5 million following the company’s dazzling initial public offering in April 1998, when Broadcom’s shares--priced at $24--soared to $53.63 in the first day of trading. Last October, each raked in another $29.7 million in a secondary offering by selling 430,000 shares each at $69.

Samueli and his wife have given $3 million to Temple Beth El in Aliso Viejo, $50,000 to Opera Pacific and an undisclosed amount to the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Nicholas’ gift to the athletic department came in the form of 10,000 shares of Broadcom stock, which already have been sold, UCI spokesman Tracy Childs said.

The money will be used to build a bigger boathouse at the Back Bay in Newport Beach and to create an endowment to help support the crew program’s operating costs. The money will allow the department to hire a full-time coach for the men’s crew team, said Dan Guerrero, the athletic director.