Legendary investor Warren Buffett, turning 94 in August, has made his largest annual donation to date, giving away $5.3 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway shares to five charities.
Buffett, known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” converted 8,674 of his Berkshire Class A shares into more than 13 million Class B shares for the donation.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation received 9.93 million shares, with the remainder distributed among the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and three charities led by his children: Howard, Susan, and Peter Buffett.
Since 2006, Buffett has been steadily donating portions of his Berkshire fortune, a conglomerate he has been running since 1965, to these five charities. Following this latest donation, Buffett still holds 207,963 Berkshire A shares and 2,586 B shares, valued at approximately $130 billion.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Buffett revealed plans for a new charitable trust to be managed by his three children after his passing. This trust will inherit the vast majority of his wealth. “It should be used to help the people that haven’t been as lucky as we have been,” Buffett stated.
Buffett confirmed that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would no longer receive donations posthumously. He stepped down as a trustee of the foundation in June 2021 during the high-profile divorce of Bill and Melinda Gates.
Greg Abel, vice chairman for noninsurance operations at Berkshire, is designated as Buffett’s successor and has assumed most of the conglomerate’s responsibilities.
Buffett has assured that his will, detailing the disposition of his assets, will be publicly accessible. “After my death, the disposition of my assets will be an open book – no ‘imaginative’ trusts or foreign entities to avoid public scrutiny but rather a simple will available for inspection at the Douglas County Courthouse,” Buffett stated in November.
