(6 News WOWT) - The “Oracle of Omaha” revealed a significant adjustment to the plans for his fortune after his death in an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal published Friday morning.
Berkshire Hathaway Founder and CEO Warren Buffett says he has established a new charitable trust that will be overseen by his three children: Howard, Susie and Peter.
In a statement also released Friday, the 93-year-old Buffett asserted that any lifetime donation pledges made when he laid out his charitable giving plan in 2006 expire when he dies, and that unanimous approval from his children will be needed for any donations coming out of his estate.
Buffett owns more than 200,000 Berkshire shares worth an estimated $130 billion, about 99 percent of which is earmarked for philanthropic purposes once he dies, according to the release.
“[My money] should be used to help the people that haven’t been as lucky as we have been,” Buffett told WSJ. “There’s eight billion people in the world, and me and my kids, we’ve been in the luckiest 100th of 1 percent or something. There’s lots of ways to help people.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — an organization to which Buffett has donated nearly $55 billion worth of shares in the past two decades — was initially included in Buffett’s will. He told WSJ that is no longer the case:
“The Gates Foundation has no money coming after my death.”
But that money hasn’t stopped coming yet, as Omaha’s investing icon made his biggest annual donation to date this week, giving $5.3 billion worth of shares to five different charities.
The Gates Foundation received the biggest gift of 9.93 million shares, with the rest going to the other four family-operated charities. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation is named after Warren’s late first wife, while the remaining three are spearheaded by his children.
Buffett served as a trustee for the Gates Foundation until resigning in 2021 during Bill and Melinda’s divorce proceedings.
Friday’s announcement comes less than two months after shareholders descended upon Omaha for the 2024 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, where Buffett honored his late business partner and former Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, who died last November.
Buffett is set to turn 94 in August.
By Nick Stavas
June 28, 2024
