“Gates Foundation will not receive any money after my death”: Warren Buffett changes his will

Warren Buffett, the 93-year-old chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has revised the future distribution of his considerable wealth. In an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal, Buffett revealed that his will has been updated to state that after his death, no more donations will be made to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Instead, his assets will go to a new charitable foundation managed by his three children.

“The Gates Foundation will not receive any money after my death,” Buffett said, according to the report.

Buffett said he has made several changes to his will because he believes strongly in his children’s values ​​and their ability to manage his philanthropic legacy. Each of his children already runs a charity.

“I feel very, very good about the values ​​of my three children and have 100 percent confidence in how they will do things,” Buffett said, as quoted in the report.

In the past, Buffett had pledged that more than 99 percent of his wealth would support the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as four family-related charities: the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation.

Livemint could not independently verify this news development.

Despite the changes in his will, Buffett continues to donate to the Gates Foundation during his lifetime.

On Friday, Berkshire Hathaway announced that Buffett is converting about 9,000 Class A shares into over 13 million Class B shares. Of these, about 9.3 million shares will go to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and the rest to the Buffett family’s four charities.

“Warren Buffett has been extraordinarily generous with gifts and advice to the Gates Foundation for over 18 years,” Mark Suzman, the foundation’s chief executive, told CNN. “We are deeply grateful for his recent donation and his contributions totaling approximately $43 billion to our work.”

Last year, Buffett donated about $870 million to his family’s four charities, and in 2022, that number will be about $750 million.

With these newly announced donations, Buffett retains his ownership of 207,963 Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares and 2,586 Class B shares, valued at approximately $128 billion.