Warren Buffett Reveals Plans For $130 Billion Fortune In His Will
Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,
Famed investor Warren Buffett has revealed details of his will, with the 93-year-old founder of Berkshire Hathaway charting a charitable course for his vast $130 billion fortune after he passes away.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Buffett said that he intends for nearly all of his immense fortune to be put into a charitable trust that will be used to help the less fortunate.
“It should be used to help the people that haven’t been as lucky as we have been,” Mr. Buffett told the outlet.
His three children—Howard, Susan, and Peter Buffett—will manage the trust, he said. In order for a donation to be made, all three will have to be in agreement on the cause, he said.
“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,” Mr. Buffett said.
“There’s lots of ways to help people.”
In 2006, Mr. Buffett committed to making annual gifts to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as four foundations associated with his family.
At the time, it was a mystery what he would do with his fortune after his death. However, in the June 28 interview, Mr. Buffett revealed that the donations to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would come to an end.
“The Gates Foundation has no money coming after my death,” Mr. Buffett told the outlet.
Besides that, the billionaire investor hasn’t prescribed to his children how to spend the money.
“I feel very, very good about the values of my three children, and I have 100 percent trust in how they will carry things out,” Mr. Buffett said.
In a press release issued on June 28, Mr. Buffett said the full contents of his will are to stay secret until his death, but that his Nov. 21, 2023, letter to shareholders set forth procedures of his will that are “unlikely to be changed before my death.”
‘Playing in Extra Innings’
In the Nov. 21, 2023, letter Mr. Buffett noted his advanced age while shedding light on the future governance of his vast fortune.
“I feel good but fully realize I am playing in extra innings,” he wrote.
At the time, he disclosed that his three children would serve as executors of his will and trustees of a charitable trust that would receive more than 99 percent of his wealth.
Mr. Buffett wrote in the letter that, when he started giving his fortune away in 2006, his children were not prepared to assume the “awesome responsibility” of managing the process. However, “they are now,” he said.
In his June 28 statement, Mr. Buffett announced that he had donated $5.3 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities.
The $5.3 billion was his biggest annual donation to date, bringing his total giving to the charities to roughly $57 billion.
Despite having given away more than half of his Berkshire stock since 2006, Buffett still owns about one-seventh of the outstanding shares.
“I have no debts and my remaining A shares are worth about $127 billion, roughly 99½ percent of my net worth,” Mr. Buffett said in the statement. “Nothing extraordinary has occurred at Berkshire; a very long runway, simple but generally sound capital deployment, the American tailwind and compounding effects produced my current wealth.’
“My will provides that more than 99 percent of my estate is destined for philanthropic usage,” he said.
Besides the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr. Buffett has donated to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which funds abortion drugs; the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which works to alleviate hunger and improve public safety; the Sherwood Foundation, which supports Nebraska nonprofits; and the NoVo Foundation, which has initiatives focused on minority girls and women.