Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett.Photo: NICHOLAS ROBERTS/AFP via Getty
Warren Buffettis resigning as a trustee of theBill 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 astatementthatprompted a responsefrom 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’sdivorce 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.”
Warren Buffett, Melinda Gates, Bill Gates.Lacy O’Toole/CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
Buffett — who has an estimated fortune of $104.4 billion, according toForbes— 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.”
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Melinda, meanwhile, said she was grateful for Buffett’s “generosity, his leadership, and his friendship.”
“What made Warren’s extraordinary investment in the foundation so meaningful was not only its amount but what it represented: an unwavering belief that everyone deserves to live a healthy, fulfilling life and an optimism that a world like that is possible,” she wrote. “His wisdom has been a guiding light through our foundation’s second decade, and the things we’ve learned from him will continue to help us chart a way forward.”
Though Bill and Melinda announced their divorce in May after 27 years of marriage, the couple said they would continue to work together at the foundation — and Suzman said that come July, he would have more information to share with employees about the organization’s future.
Warren Buffett.Monica Schipper/WireImage
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.
Buffett’s announcement comes amid turmoil for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the wake of the Gateses divorce on May 3.
“It is extremely disappointing that there have been so many untruths published about the cause, the circumstances and the timeline of Bill Gates’s divorce,” a spokesperson for Bill told PEOPLE in a statement last month. “[TheNew York Times’s] characterization of his meetings with Epstein and others about philanthropy is inaccurate, including who participated. Similarly, any claim that Gates spoke of his marriage or Melinda in a disparaging manner is false. The claim of mistreatment of employees is also false. The rumors and speculation surrounding Gates’s divorce are becoming increasingly absurd, and it’s unfortunate that people who have little to no knowledge of the situation are being characterized as ‘sources.'”
source: people.com
