 Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was Ceylon's president from 1989 to 1993, said of him that "if there was a Buddhist Temple or school that he did not help, it was not in Ceylon.Sir Ernest was, in his time, Ceylon's richest man and one of the wealthiest Ceylonese of the twentieth century.He inherited and purchased thousands of acres of tea, rubber and coconut estates as well as land in the prominent areas of Colombo.