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Warren Buffett has announced his latest charitable donation — a whopping $6 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway shares.
The 94-year-old Berkshire chairman announced Friday that he would donate about 12.4 million Class B shares to five foundations.
Most of the shares — about 9.4 million ($4.6 billion worth) — are headed for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which was founded by the Microsoft cofounder and his ex-wife.
The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after Buffett’s first wife, is set to receive about 943,000 of the shares, while roughly 660,000 are destined for each of the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the NoVo Foundation, according to a statement.
Buffett, whose net worth as of Friday was $152 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, pledged in 2006 to give away the vast majority of his fortune to philanthropic causes, and he has since made large annual donations to these foundations.
In Friday’s statement, he outlined some of the math behind his 2006 pledge: “When originally made, I owned 474,998 Berkshire A shares worth about $43 billion and those shares represented more than 98% of my net worth. I have converted A shares into B shares before making contributions.”
“During the following 19 years, I have neither bought nor sold any A or B shares nor do I intend to do so,” he continued. “The five foundations have received Berkshire B shares that had a value when received of about $60 billion, substantially more than my entire net worth in 2006. I have no debts and my remaining A shares are worth about $145 billion, well over 99% of my net worth.”
Reflecting on his success, Buffett added that “nothing extraordinary” had happened at Berkshire, instead pointing to “a very long runway, simple and generally sound decisions, the American tailwind and compounding effects.”
His stake in Berkshire now comprises 198,117 Class A shares and 1,144 Class B shares.
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