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Warren Buffett said he would gift Berkshire stock worth $1.2 billion to family foundations.
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The investor also wrote a mini letter to shareholders that was almost 1,500 words.
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Buffett spoke about his estate planning, his children, his luck in life, and philanthropy.
Warren Buffett surprised shareholders on Monday with a nearly 1,500-word letter alongside his usual Thanksgiving gift to four of his family’s foundations.
The famed investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO said he would soon convert 1,600 of his Class A shares into 2.4 million Class B shares, worth about $1.2 billion.
He pledged to distribute 1.5 million of those shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation — named after his late wife — and 300,000 shares to each of his three kids’ foundations: the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and NoVo Foundation.
In his unexpected missive to Berkshire shareholders, Buffett said the gifts would reduce his personal stockpile to 206,363 A shares, worth $149 billion. He’s now given away 56.6% of his shares since pledging 99% of them in 2006 to good causes.
The “Oracle of Omaha” said he and Susan Thompson Buffett owned 508,998 A shares at the time of her death in 2004.
All else being equal, if Buffett still owned all those shares, they’d be worth $367 billion. That would make him the world’s richest man and wealthier than Elon Musk, who’s estimated to be worth $348 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Buffett said his late wife’s estate was worth about $3 billion and 96% of that went into the pair’s foundation. She bequeathed $10 million to their three children — Howard, Susie, and Peter — which was “the first large gift we had given to any of them,” he said.
“These bequests reflected our belief that hugely wealthy parents should leave their children enough so they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing,” Buffett wrote.
The legendary stock picker reiterated his comments earlier this year that he now believes his kids are ready to handle the vast responsibility of distributing his Berkshire shares, which make up 99.5% of his wealth.
But he acknowledged that his children, now in their late 60s and early 70s, might be unable to deploy his fortune before they die. “And tomorrow’s decisions are likely to be better made by three live and well-directed brains than by a dead hand,” Buffett wrote.
“As such, three potential successor trustees have been designated. Each is well known to my children and makes sense to all of us. They are also somewhat younger than my children,” Buffett said, adding that they’re “on the waitlist” and that he hoped his children could disburse all his assets.
