Warren Buffett is donating $5.3 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock to charity

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is giving billions to charity as the billionaire investor remains steadfast in his pledge to donate 99% of his remain wealth after his death.

Buffett and his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, announced Friday morning that he will be donating more than 13 million class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock to five foundations. With a closing price of $407.95 on Thursday, that comes out to $5.3 billion.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust will receive $4 billion in shares; the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, headed by Buffett’s daughter Susie, will get $400 million; and the Sherwood Foundation (chaired also by Susie), the Howard G. Buffett Foundation (led by his son Howie), and the NoVo Foundation (headed by his other son, Peter), will receive more than $280 million each. The donations will be delivered on Friday, Berkshire said.

The 93-year-old investor first made the schedule of annual grants to these five foundations in 2006, when he established lifetime commitments to the charities. At the time, Buffett owned 474,998 Berkshire class A shares worth about $43 billion. Buffett converts class A shares to B shares in order to make the contributions.

“The five foundations have received Berkshire B shares with a value when received of about $55 billion, substantially more than my entire net worth in 2006,” Buffett said in a statement. “I have no debts and my remaining A shares are worth about $127 billion, roughly 99.5% of my net worth.”

Despite not buying or selling any A shares in the nearly two decades since Buffett committed to unloading his wealth to charity, his net worth has ballooned. For that, the “Oracle of Omaha” thanked “a very long runway, simple but generally sound capital deployment, the American tailwind and compounding effects.”

The lifetime commitments will expire upon Buffett’s death, or if certain conditions established in the 2006 letter take place, Buffett said. After his death, nearly all of his remaining wealth will be funneled into a new charitable trust overseen by his daughter and two sons, the legendary investor told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday.

Contributions to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will end when he is gone, Buffett said. His children will decide what foundations to put the money towards, and he said he has “100% trust in how they will carry things out.”

“It should be used to help the people that haven’t been as lucky as we have been,” he said. “There’s eight billion people in the world, and me and my kids, we’ve been in the luckiest 100th of 1% or something. There’s lots of ways to help people.”

At Berkshire, Buffett will leave capital allocation decisions to Greg Abel, who is next in line to helm the sprawling Omaha-based conglomerate.

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