Linacre College is expected to change its name following the first tranche of a £155m donation by Vietnamese conglomerate the SOVICO Group.

The Oxford institution, which was founded in the 1960s and has an endowment of around £19m, will become Thao College, after SOVICO chairman Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao.

Linacre said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Ms Nguyen of SOVICO Group in Edinburgh on October 31.

The £155m donation would pay for a new graduate centre and endow graduate scholarships.

In a statement, the college said: “We have long been one of the least well-endowed colleges at the University, so we are delighted that a significant part of the donation will be for our general endowment fund, to help support the daily running of [the] college.”

The college would approach the Privy Council to ask for permission to change its name from Linacre College to Thao College once the first £50m had been received, they added.

Ms Nguyen is Vietnam’s first self-made female billionaire and president of budget airline VietJet. Forbes has previously estimated her to be worth $3.1bn.

In 2018, her VietJet airline became immersed in scandal when bikini clad models were paraded through a plane carrying the national football team. Officials were said to have fined the airline 40m dong on safety grounds. Ms Nguyen was quoted at the time as saying the bikini parade had been a 'spontaneous act'.

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