Warren Buffett is accelerating his charitable donations with aim to give away Berkshire wealth by 2034

(This is a special breaking news edition of the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, featuring news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. Here To get it in your inbox every Friday evening.)

One newsletter This morning, Buffett said: “My goal is to divest all of my Berkshire holdings in about eight years.”

CNBC’s Becky Quick is sitting in Omaha with Buffett, and we’ll air this interview tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6 a.m. on “Squawk Box.”

Buffett, who will celebrate his 96th birthday next month, currently owns shares of the company with a market value of over $140 billion.

Even not taking into account possible increases in Berkshire’s stock price, this amounts to at least $17 billion in gifts each year; That’s more than double the $7 billion in stock he donated last year.

“Of course, mortality is unpredictable, but my remaining shares will be donated, one way or another, to four foundations by December 31, 2034,” Buffett says in the statement.

This exempts the Gates Foundation from further donations and Buffett said in 2006: A “lifetime” annual gift commitment would be made to the charity founded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his then-wife Melinda Gates.

According to the program he set at that time, when the number of shares decreased by 5% every year, he would donate approximately $4.5 billion to the Gates Foundation this month.

Around this time last year, Buffett gave nearly $1.4 billion in gifts to four family foundations; So this year, it looks like they will also receive the donation originally earmarked for the Gates group.

In this round, Buffett Susan Thompson Buffett FoundationThe current value of the 9 million Class B shares, named for his late first wife, is approximately $4.5 billion.

Three foundations run by children of Susie Buffett Sherwood Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundationand Peter Buffett NoVo Foundation, will receive 1 million Class B shares worth just under $500 million each.

Although the statement did not say whether he would make gifts to family foundations on Thanksgiving, as he has done for the past four years, it seems likely given his new eight-year goal.

Last year, the total of these contributions was around 1.3 billion dollars.

Earlier this month, Wall StreetJournal reported Buffett has delayed a planned donation to the Gates Foundation until a law firm reviews the charity’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, with results expected this summer.

In 2006, Buffett said he had “irrevocably committed to making an annual gift of Berkshire Hathaway ‘B’ shares for his lifetime” for the benefit of the Gates Foundation as long as Bill or Melinda Gates remained alive and active. [its] policy making and management.”

But the cracks in our strong personal friendship with Bill Gates began to appear in 2021. Buffett resigned from the foundation’s board of trustees It comes two months after Bill and Melinda announced they had decided to end their 27-year marriage.

in 2024 Buffett told Daily, “The Gates Foundation will have no money left after my death,” following a revision to his will that made his three children trustees of a charitable trust that would hold “more than 99%” of his fortune.

Statements made this year Jeffrey Epstein files The notorious pedophile’s connections to Gates further strain Buffett’s relationship with the Microsoft co-founder.

In March, Buffett said: CNBC He hasn’t spoken to Gates “since everything came out” and “until everything became clear… I just don’t think it makes sense to talk too much.”

When asked if we would continue giving money to the Gates Foundation, Buffett said, “I’ll wait and see what happens… I don’t have to make that decision today. And I didn’t make it today.”

“I learned things I didn’t know about something all these years.”

Over the past two decades, Buffett’s donations to the Gates Foundation have totaled almost $48 billion, based on the value of the shares at the time they were donated.

The current value of approximately 321 million shares donated to charity is around $159 billion.

He sold the vast majority of them over the years to help finance his operations.

“The Gates Foundation is grateful to Warren Buffett for his decades of support of our work,” the foundation said in a statement to CNBC. he said. “His donations, totaling more than $47 billion, have helped us expand and fulfill the foundation’s mission to improve health and opportunity for people around the world. The foundation continues to advance our work from a position of financial strength, supported by Bill’s $200 billion commitment through 2045.”

Please send me any questions or comments about the newsletter at: alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (We’re sorry, but we do not forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

Additionally, reading Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders is highly recommended. There are people gathered on Berkshire’s website here.

— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch