Buffett gifts to Gates Foundation to end when he dies, WSJ says

Buffett Gifts to Gates Foundation to End When He Dies, WSJ Says

Warren Buffett’s donations to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will stop when he dies, with his daughter and two sons overseeing a new charitable trust, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

“The Gates Foundation has no money coming after my death,” the 93-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. told the newspaper in an interview.

The three children — Susie, Howard and Peter — must unanimously decide how to allocate future donations, which Buffett said should be used “to help people that haven’t been as lucky as we have been.”

Buffett is the world’s 10th-richest person, with a net worth of $134.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In 2010, he started the Giving Pledge, with his friends Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, saying he would donate his fortune either in his lifetime or at his death. Four years earlier, he started making massive donations to the Gates’s foundation, as well as foundations tied to his children.

In a statement Friday, Berkshire said Buffett would donate more than 13 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to five foundations, including the Gates Foundation.

The five foundations have received Berkshire Class B shares with a value about $55 billion, more than Buffett’s entire net worth in 2006, when a schedule for the gifts was first established, according to the statement.