Leading American investor, business tycoon, and philanthropist, Warren Buffett has contributed close to $2.9 billion of Berkshire Hathaway Inc stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four other family-run charities recently.
Berkshire said that Mr. Buffett’s 15th annual donation included 15.97 million Class B shares of Berkshire which boosted his donations to the charities towards more than $37.4 billion since Buffett began giving his Berkshire shares away in 2006.
80 percent of the contributions go to Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates’s Gates Foundation co-run by his wife Melinda. The rest goes to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for Buffett’s late first wife, and institutions run by his children Howard, Susan and Peter: the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the Sherwood Foundation and the NoVo Foundation.
Buffett’s biggest contribution was $3.61 billion in 2019 when Berkshire’s stock price was higher. Though Buffett has distributed 48% of his Berkshire shares, he still owns roughly 15.2% of the conglomerate which controls nearly one-third of its voting power.
Mr. Buffett is ranked seventh worldwide by Forbes with his net worth standing at $71.4 billion. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos ranked first at $178.1 billion, while Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was second.
Berkshire stock has considerably suffered in broader markets during 2019 and 2020. This is in part because Buffett has not found attractive major acquisitions and financing opportunities for his $440 billion conglomerate, even during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
