Warren Buffett charity lunch sells for $2.68 million
NEW YORK: An anonymous fan of Warren Buffett agreed to pay $2,679,001 at an online charity auction to have lunch with the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The winning bid came in the closing seconds of the five-day eBay auction, which drew 41 bids before ending on Friday night. It was lower than the record $3,456,789 bid in similar auctions in 2012 and 2016.
Money will go to Glide, a San Francisco charity that provides food, health care and other services to the homeless, the impoverished, and people struggling with substance abuse. The successful bidder and up to seven friends will dine with Buffett at the Smith & Wollensky steak house in Manhattan. All topics are fair game apart from where Buffett will invest next. Buffett has held 18 annual auctions for Glide, raising about $26.3 million.
He became involved with Glide after his first wife, Susan, became a volunteer, prior to her death in 2004. “We are very delighted and proud that Mr. Buffett has for years made sure that he participates,” the Rev. Cecil Williams, 87, co-founder of Glide and pastor since 1963 of the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, said after the auction ended.
Contributions have a “tremendous impact” on people who find themselves “really unable to come to grips with the issue of poverty in urban America,” Williams said. Glide uses its $18 million annual budget to provide more than 750,000 free meals, emergency shelter for 8,500 people, 2,600 HIV and Hepatitis C tests, and day care and after-school programs for nearly 450 children.