Warren Buffett donates nearly $900 million to charities before Thanksgiving

Warren Buffett has donated more than $870 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock to four charitable foundations, a holiday tradition that underscores the billionaire's pledge to give away most of his wealth to philanthropy.  

The famed investor granted 1.5 million Class B shares of his conglomerate to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, a charitable vehicle that invests in reproductive health and family planning grants, the company said in statement on Tuesday. He also distributed 300,000 Class B shares to each of the three organizations run by his children: the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation. 

The donations "supplement certain of the lifetime pledges I made in 2006 and that continue until my death (at 93, I feel good but fully realize I am playing in extra innings)," Buffett said Tuesday in a statement. 

Buffett, 93, also doubled down on his pledge to donate roughly 99% of his nearly $120 billion fortune to charity, revealing that his children, who share his views on righting wealth inequalities through private philanthropy, will serve as executors of his will. 

"My children, along with their father, have a common belief that dynastic wealth, though both legal and common in much of the world including the United States, is not desirable," Buffett said. "After my death, the disposition of my assets will be an open book."

Buffett has made annual donations to the same four charities since 2006. Last year, he donated an equal number of his company's shares, worth roughly $750 million at the time, to the family foundations. 

Buffett has also made large contributions to charities outside the holiday season. In June, the billionaire donated $4.64 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to five charities, bringing his total donations since 2006 to more than $51 billion, Reuters reported.

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• Warren Buffett
• Donations
• Thanksgiving

Elizabeth Napolitano

Elizabeth Napolitano is a freelance reporter at CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and technology news. She also writes for CoinDesk. Before joining CBS, she interned at NBC News' BizTech Unit and worked on the Associated Press' web scraping team.