Warren Buffett exits the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation amid their divorce drama
Warren Buffet is one of the richest people in the world. He’s probably also one of the most low-key billionaires ever. While he amassed a fortune exceeding $100 billion, he still lives in a nice-but-not-opulent family home in Omaha, the same home he’s resided in for decades. He’s not swigging pricey champagne or flying to Japan just to have a steak. For years now, he’s been doing the Giving Pledge, where he’s pledged 99% of his wealth to charity, and he’s encouraged other billionaires to do the same. Mackenzie Scott has followed in his footsteps in her own way.
Anyway, for the better part of two decades, Buffett has been something of a surrogate father figure and mentor to Bill Gates. In 2006, Buffet told the world that he would donate, over the years to come, the bulk of his money to the Gates Foundation, because he really believed in the work the foundation was doing. At this point – in 2021 – he’s given away about half of his fortune, most of it to the Gates Foundation. And that was enough to get himself a seat on the board of trustees for the foundation. Only Bill and Melinda’s marriage has blown up spectacularly and all of Bill’s dirty deeds are coming to light. So… Warren Buffet is getting the hell out of there.
Warren Buffett is resigning as a trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of five organizations to which he also pledged a $4.1 billion distribution on Wednesday. Buffett announced his departure in a statement that prompted a response from Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman, who said he has been involved in “active” discussions with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates as to how best “provide long-term stability and sustainability for the foundation’s governance and decision-making” following the couple’s divorce announcement last month.
Buffett, the 90-year-old chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, has served as a trustee of the Gates Foundation for the past 15 years, though he said he’d been “inactive…for years.”
“I am now resigning from that post, just as I have done at all corporate boards other than Berkshire’s,” he wrote. “The CEO of BMG is Mark Suzman, an outstanding recent selection who has my full support. My goals are 100% in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical participation is in no way needed to achieve these goals.”
Buffett – who has an estimated fortune of $104.4 billion, according to Forbes – also announced that he will be distributing $4.1 billion among the five different foundations to which he previously pledged to give all of his Berkshire Hathaway shares.
Suzman said in an email to Gates Foundation employees that his organization would receive a $3.2 billion gift from Buffett on Wednesday, bringing Buffett’s total donated sum to nearly $33 billion.
“Today is a milestone for me,” Buffett said in his statement. “In 2006, I pledged to distribute all of my Berkshire Hathaway shares – more than 99% of my net worth – to philanthropy. With today’s $4.1 billion distribution, I’m halfway there.”
Buffett did not offer a reason for his departure from the foundation, but said he felt as though “society has a use for my money; I don’t.” He noted that he has “relatively little” income, as most of his wealth comes from his Berkshire holdings, but that those other assets allow him to live “as I wish. My needs are simple; what made me happy at 40 makes me happy at 90,” he wrote.
Without a doubt, I believe Buffett wanted to get out while the getting was good. There would be no good reason for a well-respected and admired 90-year-old billionaire to spend his twilight years being dragged into the ins and outs of the divorce of his two billionaire friends. Buffett is making it clear he still believes in the work of the foundation, and I think the message he’s sending to Bill and Melinda is that the foundation is the only thing worth saving from the fiery wreckage of their divorce. And honestly, that will mean a lot to both of them and they both listen to Buffett’s advice very closely. But yeah, he wants no part of their shenanigans. He wants to golf and hang out in Omaha and just chill.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
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