Warren Buffett’s charity lunch for the Glide Foundation ended with a winning bid of $3.5 million. The Glide Foundation is based in San Francisco and the foundation provides help and services to the homeless.
Over the past 13 years, Warren Buffett has been holding this annual charity lunch but this year tops all as the highest amount paid to have lunch with the legendary investor. With this year’s record in the books, Warren Buffett has help raised over $11.5 million over the years for Glide. Glide’s founder, Rev. Cecil Williams, told the Associated Press that “we are shouting, dancing, rejoicing and celebrating” once they learned of the winning bid.
Last year’s winner, hedge fund manager Ted Wschler was lucky enough to be hired by Buffett to be a portfolio manager at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) (BRK.B). However, not all of the winners are lucky enough to go work for Buffett.
Winners of the charity auction join Warren Buffett at Smith and Wollensky steakhouse in New York. While Buffett will not answer any investment advice, the philanthropist will gladly talk about most other topics such as family and helping those in need.
Unfortunately, Warren Buffett made an announcement earlier this year saying that he has early stages of prostate cancer. However, Buffett quickly calmed the chaos by saying that he does not plan to step down from his CEO position at Berkshire Hathaway. The investor did tell news sources that the search for his successor is heating up.
While the successor is likely to be no Warren Buffett, you can be sure that the next CEO of Berkshire Hathaway will not be some average Joe. I believe that Berkshire will continue to flourish even after Buffett has stepped down.
The bottom line is that Warren Buffett has helped raised over $11.5 million for the Glide Foundation which helps the homeless in San Francisco. After a very slow start to the auction, the winning bidder set a new record for the annual charity of $3.5 million. This money goes to a great cause and will surely be much appreciated. While Buffett may have early prostate cancer, it is no reason to start panicking over successors to his CEO position at Berkshire. Buffett has already said that his successor will take over when the time is right which means we still have some time left before one of the greatest investors in the world, arguably, retires from the industry.
