Buffett is speeding up the donation of Berkshire (BRK.B.US) shares to the family foundation! Shareholding will be emptied in the next 8 years, and the Gates Foundation will be “cut off” for the first time in 20 years

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Warren Buffett (Warren Buffett), a 95-year-old investment master and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A.US, BRK.B.US), is speeding up the pace of donating shares to charities managed by his three children during the year. This move allows him to fully dispose of all of his holdings in the company within the next eight years.

However, in the future donation plan announced this time, there was a notable change: for the first time in 20 years, Buffett decided to skip a mid-year donation to the Gates Foundation (Gates Foundation) and was not included in the list of institutions that will accept his donations in the future. The decision followed a wave of public opinion earlier this year — a series of documents released by the US Department of Justice at the time, once again sparked close attention from the outside world about the relationship between Bill Gates (Bill Gates) and the late wealthy Jeffrey Epstein (Jeffrey Epstein) involved in sexual assault.

The family foundation is the main undertaker, and each child manages it independently

According to an official statement released on Tuesday, Buffett plans to donate 1 million Berkshire Class B shares (BRK.B) to each of his three charities — Sherwood Foundation (Sherwood Foundation), Howard G. Buffett Foundation (Howard G. Buffett Foundation), and NoVo Foundation (NoVo Foundation) — which are each independently managed by his three children. Additionally, he will donate 9 million Class B shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation) named after his late wife.

“Of course, life is impermanent, but in any case, my remaining shares will be donated to these four foundations by December 31, 2034,” Buffett said in a statement. “Our goal is for annual grants to the foundation managed independently by my three children to increase year by year, while annual grants to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation grow slightly faster.”

Buffett said last year that he wanted to speed up charitable donations to these foundations so that his children could more easily dispose of their huge heritage after their death. In fact, about a year ago, the Berkshire chairman donated about US$320 million worth of shares to each of these three foundations, and later promised to donate an additional $200 million to each institution later in the same year.

Book holding and donation mechanism

According to regulatory documents, Buffett currently holds 188290 Class A shares (BRK.A) and 1,162 Class B shares of Berkshire.

According to Berkshire's statutes, Class A shares with high voting power can be unidirectionally converted to Class B shares at a ratio of 1:1500 at any time. In order to fulfill the donation promise of a total of 12 million Class B shares, Buffett may only need to apply for the conversion of 8,000 Class A shares under his name.

Suspend additional donations or await the results of an external review

The market generally believes that the decision not to include the Gates Foundation in the list is related to the Epstein crisis.

According to previous media reports, the Gates Foundation has previously commissioned an external agency to review its past dealings and interactions with Epstein, and plans to re-evaluate and revise policies to screen new charitable partnerships. Sources revealed that Buffett will temporarily put on hold any additional donation plans to the foundation until the results of this review are finally released.