“At Thanksgiving I have much to be thankful for,” Warren Buffet said in a statement Tuesday, announcing that he had gifted 2.4 million Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock to charitable foundations run by his children.
The gifts to The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, The Sherwood Foundation, The Howard G. Buffett Foundation and NoVo Foundation total approximately $876 million and are in addition to the regular donations he makes each summer to those foundations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
This is the second year that Buffett has made additional gifts to the family foundations around Thanksgiving.
"My children, along with their father, have a common belief that dynastic wealth, though both legal and common in much of the world including the United States, is not desirable," Buffett said in the statement, adding that after his death, his children would act as trustees of a charitable trust that would inherit 99% of his wealth.
The “testamentary trust will be self-liquidating after a decade or so and operate with a lean staff,” Buffett said. His will will be available for inspection at the county courthouse in Omaha, he said. Buffett first committed to giving away his fortune in 2006, and in 2012, he increased the annual donations he made to the foundations.
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The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation is named after Buffett's first wife who has since passed away. His children are Susie, Howard and Peter Buffett.
In 2021, Warren Buffett estimated that he had given away about half of his wealth as counted by the number of Berkshire Hathaway shares that he holds. The remaining shares, he said, were valued at around $100 billion.
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