Warren Buffett leaves Gates Foundation out of annual charity gifts amid Epstein probe; backs family foundations

As reported by CNBC, Berkshire Hathaway said its 95-year-old chairman will donate 9 million Class B shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. The Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation will each receive 1 million Class B shares.

The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after Buffett’s late first wife, will receive shares currently worth around $4.5 billion. The three other foundations, which are run by his children, will each receive shares worth just under $500 million.

Buffett plans to give away his Berkshire shares by 2034

Buffett said he now intends to dispose of his remaining Berkshire holdings over roughly the next eight years.

“My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years,” Buffett said in a statement announcing the gifts. “As I explained last year, my children are unfortunately growing older. I have every hope that the three of them are able to carry out the disposal of my shares by December 31, 2034.“

Buffett, who will turn 96 next month, still owns Berkshire stock with a market value of more than $140 billion.

Even if Berkshire’s share price does not rise, disposing of that amount over eight years would mean gifts worth at least $17 billion a year. That would be more than twice the roughly $7 billion in stock Buffett donated last year.

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

The statement does not say whether Buffett will continue making separate Thanksgiving donations to the family foundations, as he has done over the past four years. Last year, those contributions totaled around $1.3 billion.

Gates Foundation receives nothing in latest round

The Gates Foundation is notably absent from Buffett’s latest donation plan. For years, it received the largest portion of his annual Berkshire stock gifts.

Since 2006, Buffett has donated nearly $48 billion worth of Berkshire shares to the foundation, based on their value at the time of the donations. The nearly 321 million shares he donated would be worth around $159 billion today, although the foundation has sold most of them over the years to fund its operations.

Under the donation schedule Buffett established in 2006, with the number of shares falling by 5% each year, the Gates Foundation had been due to receive nearly $4.5 billion this month.

Last year, Buffett gave around $1.4 billion to the four family-linked foundations. This year’s much larger donations suggest they are also receiving the stock that would previously have gone to the Gates Foundation.

The decision marks a major change from the commitment Buffett made two decades ago.

In a 2006 letter to Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, Buffett said he was “irrevocably committing” to make annual gifts of Berkshire shares to their foundation “throughout my lifetime,” as long as at least one of them remained alive and actively involved in the foundation’s policy-setting and administration.

Drift in Buffett’s and Gates’ relationship

However, Buffett’s relationship with Bill Gates has appeared to become more distant in recent years.In 2021, Buffett resigned as a trustee of the Gates Foundation, two months after Bill and Melinda Gates announced the end of their 27-year marriage.

In 2024, Buffett also made clear that the Gates Foundation would not receive any of his fortune after his death. “The Gates Foundation has no money coming after my death,” Buffett told The Wall Street Journal.

That followed a revision to his will under which his three children would serve as trustees of a charitable trust holding “99%-plus” of his wealth.

Epstein review added further strain

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Buffett was holding back his customary Gates Foundation donation while waiting for the outcome of a law firm’s review into the charity’s ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The results of that review were expected this summer.

Revelations about Gates’ connections to Epstein also appeared to put further pressure on Buffett’s relationship with the Microsoft co-founder.

In a March interview with CNBC, Buffett said he had not spoken with Gates “at all since the whole thing was unveiled.”

Asked whether the two were still close friends, Buffett said they had shared “great times together,” but added, “Until it gets cleared up … I just don’t think it makes sense to do a lot of talking.“

When asked whether he would continue donating to the Gates Foundation, Buffett said, “I’ll wait and see what unfolds … I don’t have to make that decision today. And I haven’t made it today.” “I’ve learned things I didn’t know about something for all these years.”