David Koch, a billionaire American libertarian and influential donor to conservative causes, has died at age 79 after a long battle with cancer, his older brother Charles said on Friday.
Mr. Koch retired last year as Executive Vice President of Koch Industries, the conglomerate he co-owned with Mr. Charles and built into the second largest family-owned company in the U.S.
“He believed he had a responsibility to a world that had given him so many opportunities to succeed,” Mr. Charles said in a statement.
Both brothers were a force behind the scenes in Republican politics, giving heavily to candidates and causes that matched their conservative economic positions.
But Mr. David was socially liberal — a supporter of abortion rights and same sex marriage as well as a non-interventionist foreign policy.
Mr. David ran as the Libertarian Party’s Vice Presidential candidate in 1980, but later joined Republican party. He was remembered as an important financial contributor to cultural organisations and medical research.
He was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer 27 years ago but through “a combination of brilliant doctors, state-of-the-art medications and his own stubbornness kept the cancer at bay,” Mr. Charles said.
