http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_1521.aspx



World's Second Richest Man Makes Stunning Philanthropic Move
Monday June 26, 2006
How would you like to have to figure out how to spend $1.5 billion within the next year?

It's a problem a North American charity will be happily dealing with, after investor Warren Buffett made the kind of magnanimous offer rarely seen in the world of business, where acquiring more is the name of the game.

He's decided to give away an astonishing $37 billion to charity. That's about 80 percent of his entire $44 billion fortune.

Buffett will fork over $1.5 billion a year to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is dedicated to helping solve the problem of world health and poverty, while giving Third World countries access to technology. It also aids domestic education causes.

Gates, the founder of Microsoft and the man acknowledged as the world's richest human being, announced last week he'd be stepping back from his own corporate duties to devote more time to his charity.

The 75-year-old Buffett, the planet's second wealthiest man, wants to see the money put to good use while he's still alive.

"My doctor tells me that I am in excellent health, and I certainly feel that I am," he writes in a letter to Bill and Melinda Gates. "If I should become incapacitated, however, and be unable to administer my affairs, I direct whoever is in charge of my affairs to honor the commitment I am making in this letter. "

The money comes with some strings attached. Every single donation has to be spent within the year, and can't be used for the proverbial rainy day or to build up the Foundation's already considerable $29.1 billion coffers.

The gifts will arrive every month for the rest of Buffett's life.

"You have committed yourselves to a few extraordinarily important but underfunded issues, a policy that I believe offers the highest probability of your achieving goals of great consequence," his letter states.

The gift is the single largest donation ever made by one person in North American history.

"Even if you look at what (John D.) Rockefeller and (Andrew) Carnegie gave historically -- even if you do it in today's numbers, it doesn't come close to that," marvels Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Buffet made his billions at the helm of a company called Berkshire Hathaway, a struggling textile manufacturer he took over in 1965. It's now a $141.8 billion empire, which controls such prominent firms as Benjamin Moore Pains, Geico Auto Insurance, Fruit of the Loom, Johns Manville and Dairy Queen.

Last edited by geroin on Jun-27-2006 at 03:33