Ellis Kadoorie

Who was Ellis Kadoorie?

Sir Ellis Kadoorie was a Hong Kong businessman and philanthropist. He was a member of the wealthy Baghdadian Kadoorie family that had large business interests in the Far East. His brother was Sir Elly Kadoorie, and his nephew was Lawrence Kadoorie. His family were originally Iraqi Jews from Baghdad who later migrated to Bombay, India in the mid-eighteenth century.

Ellis Kadoorie arrived in Shanghai from Bombay in 1880 as an employee of the Sephardi Jewish firm David Sassoon & Sons. Within a few years he had accumulated large sums of money and had gone into business on his own account, with companies in both Shanghai and Hong Kong. Over the next two decades, the Kadoorie brothers made their fortunes, achieving success in banking, rubber plantations, electric power utilities and real estate, and gaining a major share-holding in Hong Kong Hotels Limited.

Sir Ellis was knighted in 1917.

In the 1910s Sir Ellis founded several schools in China and Hong Kong, among them are Sir Ellis Kadoorie Secondary School - West Kowloon in Hong Kong, and Shanghai Yucai High school.

Sir Ellis died and was buried in Hong Kong on 24 February 1922. He is buried in the Jewish Cemetery.