After giving away more than $39 billion over 15 years, Warren Buffett has warned that his support for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation could end with him.
in interview With the wall Street Journal, The 93-year-old philanthropist said his will includes no further explicit pledges to charity once he is gone. So far, there has been no concrete indication one way or another of what might happen to his fortune in the event of his death.
“The Gates Foundation will not receive any money after my death,” said Buffett, whose longtime Berkshire Hathaway business partner Charlie Munger died at age 99 late last year.
Buffett said that all of his remaining fortune — currently worth about $127 billion — that he has not donated so far will be bequeathed to a charitable trust overseen by his three children: Howard, Susie and Peter.
While that doesn’t rule out future donations to the Gates Foundation, Buffett said they will have to make a unanimous decision on how to spend his billions after he’s gone.
“I feel very good about the values of my three children,” he said. magazine, “I have complete confidence in how they will execute things.”
Buffett, whose will became public upon his death, first I drew a plan To find out what would happen to his fortune in November, the three were appointed as executors and trustees.
“They were not fully prepared for this enormous responsibility in 2006, but they are now,” he said at the time.
Speaking to the newspaper, his daughter and two sons said that they have not yet made concrete plans for how to spend the money, not only because it depends on tax laws and developments in society, but also because it is premature.
“I can imagine it’s probably a continuation of what we’ve been doing,” Susie Buffett said.
The Gates Foundation did not respond to a request for comment. luck To state.
The second blow that the Gates Foundation received recently
The charity, run by CEO Mark Suzman, has distributed grants totaling about $78 billion since its founding. Among its reasons – combating poverty around the world and eliminating malaria, which is the disease that it claims Over 600,000 lives every year.
Buffett is one of the foundation’s most generous supporters, having made donations since 2006, when he joined it as a trustee. Buffett stepped down in 2021, the same year Melinda French Gates announced her intention to divorce the Microsoft co-founder.
The Omaha native will take over the position, Berkshire Hathaway said in a statement Friday. Donates Another 9.9 million shares of Class B stock for a total value of $4 billion to the Corporation effective immediately.
The news is the latest blow to Suzman and the foundation, after Melinda French Gates resigned in May to devote herself to fighting the decline of women’s rights in the United States and around the world.
“Warren Buffett has been extremely generous to the Gates Foundation during more than 18 years of contributions and advice,” Suzman said. magazine. “He has played an invaluable role in supporting and shaping the Foundation’s work to create a world where every person can live a healthy, productive life.”