Bill Gates, the founder and chairman was included in Business 2.0’s 50 Who Matter List, not for being the software guru, but for his work as a philanthropist. He recently announced that he was going to leave Microsoft in two years and focus entirely on The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Perhaps, Bill’s plans to focus on the charitable work, his good friend, and the second richest man the world, Warren Buffett has has pledged a gift of 10 million class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway Corporation to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That works out to about $31 billion. Mr. Buffett’s BH holdings are said to be around $40 billion. He will also join the foundation as a trustee, Fortune reports. (Read Fortune interview with Warren Buffett.) Whatever you might think about Microsoft (and their products), you have to cheer Bill’s next career move.
Could anyone explain what “M$” means?
Could anyone explain what “M$” means?… hehehe
This is pretty strange tho, I wonder if any of WB’s Family is gonna try and talk him out of this, siting he may not be in his right mind by making the richest man in the world more rich…
Very strange indeed…
Warren Buffetts best freind Walter Scott runs Level3…Bill Gates is going to roll out Vista in 2007 over the NET…Buffett and Gates and Scott on a plane in 1995 going to England when Bill Gates told Scott to build a fiber network and he would deliver software OVER the NET…connecting the dots yet????????
Skibare
He is not going to leave Microsoft completely – just to lower his activities there.
A gift of $100,000 would completely pay off my house and all bills and would be deeply appreciated. I would like to retire in five years without needing my kids help. An unexpected divorce left me starting over.
Does either of these rich, generous men look at requests? I feel lucky to be working and have great kids but I’m really worried about ever being able to retire. Just a question…
Thanks
I wonder if there is a benefit the Gates Foundation can achieve from its scale. Can a $50 billion foundation have a greater net impact than ten $5 billion foundations? If so, perhaps Buffett’s donation is the start of a trend, with results-driven ultra high net worth individuals opting to pool assets, rather than establish foundations bearing their own names. Much like the concept of hedge funds, applied to philanthropy. The idea is nothing new, of course.
I wonder if this pisses Ted Turner off. He used to be the reigning champ of meglomaniacal altruists and now Bill and Warren have taken the game to a level well beyond him.
Bill and Buffett have been long time friends, with their common bond (besides being insanely rich) being hey play Bridge tournaments together. I doubt this has anything to do with furthering business relationships (like the software delivery over the net conspiracy), but more that Buffett saw that with Gates doing this nearly full time, there was an opportunity for someone he admires to put his money towards solving some of the world’s most vexing issues. I think its a pretty cool trend, and hopefully guys like Ellison and others will stop playing “who can get the biggest number” game and do something worthwhile with all the money they couldn’t possibly spend.
we could all use a good bridge partner… it just took Bill and Warren to become the two richest men to find one another.
WOW， $31 billion, the richest man in china is approximately $2 billion, and it’s may be the summation of top 100 richest men in china.
I wonder if any of WB’s Family is gonna try and talk him out of this…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~lol ,i think so.
I wonder why they cant help here in the good old U.S. of America more instead of other countries. They made the money here off of Americans and we need help here. Lots of homeless and lots of Storm victims still need help. It should begin at home!!!!!!!