The steel magnate Swraj Paul, Lord Paul, who has died aged 94, fostered a reputation as a leading international philanthropist in his native India, the US and his adopted British homeland, with large charitable donations, many of which resulted in developments bearing his family name.

Among the beneficiaries of his gifts are London Zoo, where part of the children’s zoo is named in memory of his daughter Ambika, and the University of Wolverhampton, where Paul was chancellor from 1999 until his death and where the science and engineering faculty building on the Telford campus is named after his son Angad. Other establishments in Jalandhar, India, where Paul was born, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), also carry the family name. Despite the collapse of the core steel business of his Caparo group 10 years ago, the Paul family was 81st in this year’s Sunday Times “rich list”, valued at £2bn.

Paul was made a Labour peer in 1996, but left the party and sat as a crossbencher after 2010, in the fallout of a dispute over parliamentary expenses. In 2009 the Sunday Times reported that Paul had claimed £38,000 of parliamentary allowances for an 18-month period spanning 2005-06. He immediately repaid £15,000, more than would have been requested, and a police investigation concluded that Paul had no case to answer. He was, however, suspended from membership of the House of Lords for four months. The affair also led to his resignation as a deputy speaker of the Lords – the first of Indian origin – after two years in the post.

Paul was a generous Labour party donor. He was inspired to join the party by the former leader Michael Foot, having opened a steel plant in Tredegar, in Foot’s Ebbw Vale constituency. He also admired Gordon Brown, and contributed £45,000 towards Brown’s Labour leadership campaign.

Having arrived in the UK in 1966, seeking medical treatment for two-year-old Ambika, who was suffering from leukaemia and died two years later, Paul decided to remain in London with his family. He began manufacturing steel tubes for the gas industry and by 1978 had built and launched the Caparo group, which subsequently developed into a multimillion-pound business with extensive interests in engineering, hotel and property development and investment.

As founder chairman, Paul was comfortably within the top 100 wealthiest people in the UK at the end of the last century and by then had handed day-to-day management to his three sons. His youngest son, Angad, became chief executive in 2002 and diversified the company into the film industry and building Formula One racing cars. A downturn in the steel industry in 2015 led to 16 of the group’s 20 companies collapsing into administration, incurring major job losses; three weeks later Angad killed himself, falling from the eighth-floor penthouse of the family apartment building named Ambika House in Portland Place, central London.

Swraj was the sixth of seven children born to Payare and Mongwati Paul – both his parents died when he was a child. The word “swraj” means “independence” – the term used by Mahatma Gandhi for his vision of the future of India – and Paul claimed he was given the name because Gandhi had visited his family home at the time of his birth. His father had started a steel business in 1910 in Jalandhar, dealing in buckets and agricultural machinery. It was built into the huge conglomerate Apeejay Surrendra in Kolkata (then Calcutta), dealing in tea plantations, hotels, shipping and real estate, by Swraj’s brothers.

Swraj went to Labhu Ram Doaba school then Doaba College in Jalandhar and Forman Christian College, Lahore, before studying for a BSc and an MSc in mechanical engineering at MIT. He returned to work for the family business in 1953 and three years later married Aruna Vij.

Paul was known as a kindly man with a broad smile. But he also relished being known as a “man of steel” and the smile only partly disguised a ruthless business operator who personally curated his considerable standing in society, both in the UK and India.

He branched into other ventures, including hotel and property interests, and the purchase of the Empire Tea Co in 1980. In 1984 he paid £14m to acquire Fidelity, a consumer electronics business that he believed to be profitable but in fact was running at a loss. Paul sued the auditors, but lost in a landmark decision. Undeterred, he sued again, this time as Fidelity itself, and eventually won an out-of-court settlement.

He had become a British citizen in 1976, hugely relished his walk-on role in British politics and loved rubbing shoulders with politicians. He held an annual tea party at London Zoo and Foot, Margaret Thatcher and Brown were all among his guests on different occasions. He was close to the former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, who encouraged him to invest in Indian companies, and in 1983 awarded him the Padma Bhushan for distinguished service. He published a biography of the Indian prime minister in 1984, the year of her assassination. He also wrote two volumes of autobiography, Beyond Boundaries (1998) and Building My World (2024).

Paul was a member of the Olympic Delivery Committee (2005-11) with responsibility for land acquisition, of the Board of London Development Agency (2000–05) and of the Bank of England monetary policy committee (1998-2001). Lords’ committees included economic affairs (2001-03; 2005-09); the EU (2008-10); and science and technology (2003-07). Following the expenses inquiry he continued to attend daily at Westminster until his death, but he played no further part in proceedings. Between 2019 and 2024 he spoke only once, but claimed £100,946 in permitted allowances, the Guardian reported.

He founded the Indo-British Association in 1975, which he chaired for 25 years, and as well as Wolverhampton was chancellor of Westminster University (2006-14) and pro-chancellor (1997-2000) and chancellor (2000-01) of Thames Valley University. He was made a freeman of the City of London (1998) and a member of the privy council (2009).

His wife died in 2022. Paul is survived by their twin sons, Ambar and Akash, and daughter Anjali.

• Swraj Paul, Lord Paul, industrialist and philanthropist, born 18 February 1931; died 21 August 2025