(Reuters) – Warren Buffett donated $5.3 billion of Berkshire Hathaway shares to five charities, the largest donation since he began making donations in 2006.
The donation, announced Friday, is for about 13 million shares of Berkshire’s Class B stock, 9.93 million of which will go to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Buffett also said he will donate 993,035 shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named in honor of his late first wife, and 695,122 shares to each of three charities run by his children Howard, Susan and Peter: the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the Sherwood Foundation and the NoVo Foundation.
The 93-year-old businessman plans to sell more than 99% of the fortune he built within the Berkshire conglomerate, based in Omaha, Nebraska, and which he has led since 1965.
Although he has sold more than half of his Berkshire shares, Warren Buffett still has a fortune estimated at $134.3 billion, making him the eighth richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine.
With the donation announced Friday, his total charitable giving reaches about $57 billion.
(Written by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Niket Nishant in Bangalore; French version Mathias de Rozario, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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