Emanuel Raphael Belilios
Emanuel Raphael Belilios, (14 November 1837 – 11 November 1905) was a banker, opium dealer, philanthropist, and businessman, born in Calcutta, British India and active in Hong Kong. His father, Raphael Emanuel Belilios, was a member of a Jewish Venetian family. Belilios married Simha Ezra in 1855, and in 1862 he settled in Hong Kong and engaged in trade. His success saw him described in the British press at the time as "one of the merchant princes of the colony." In the 1870s, Belilios was chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited. He tried to establish relations with the then British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli by proposing a marble and bronze statue of Disraeli, which was declined by the prime minister himself. Belilios erected the Beaconsfield Arcade, a reference to Disraeli title Lord Beaconsfield, in Hong Kong instead. However until his death Bellios would annually send a wreath to decorate the statue of Benjamin Disraeli on Parliament Square. He became Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Chairman from 1876 to 1882, appointed to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong in 1881 and as the Council's Senior Unofficial Member from 1892 to 1900. Belilios gained his reputation as a philanthropist. In