Just as he had done in the past, Billionaire Businnessman, Warren Buffett on Monday donated roughly $3.17 billion of Berkshire Hathaway Inc stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities, his largest contribution in a more than decade-long plan to give away his fortune topping last year’s $2.86 billion gift, thanks to the rising value of his conglomerate’s share price over the past year, to charity.
Most of the donation (about $2.4 billion) was placed in the hands of the richest man on the planet, Bill Gates. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, run by the Microsoft cofounder and his wife, focuses on causes like ending world poverty, improving U.S. schools and combating infectious diseases like HIV, polio and malaria.
Buffett also gave hundreds of millions to four charities connected to close family members: the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, the charity named for his late wife that focuses on family planning programs and college scholarships, plus each of his three children’s foundations — the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the Sherwood Foundation and the NoVo Foundation — which are run by Howard, Susan and Peter Buffett, respectively.