University of Florida receives $75m gift for the business school

The University of Florida has received its largest ever gift of $75m, from alumnus Al Warrington and his wife Judy. The money will be used to support teaching and research at the university’s business school, which already bears the Warrington name following a previous $25m gift.

Mr Warrington graduated from the University of Florida in 1958 and went on to work for accounting firm Arthur Andersen for 30 years. He left the firm in 1989 and set up waste haulage company Sanifill, in Houston, which merged with Waste Services in 1996 and to hold other business interests.

Although large, the $100m donation is far from the most generous in US business school history. In September 2013, the Ross school at the University of Michigan announced that real estate developer Stephen Ross had given a further $100m to the business school on top of a $100m naming gift in 2004. But it is University of Chicago MBA alumnus David Booth who holds the record as the most generous donor, having donated $300m to his alma mater in 2008.

The Warrington school’s dean John Kraft was effusive in his praise for Mr Warrington, who was a member of the business college’s original advisory council. “Having the Warrington name associated with this college is a privilege and a reminder to our graduates and students that hard work, ingenuity and integrity are ingredients to success in life,” says Prof Kraft.