Billionaire Warren Buffett has awarded nearly $4 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares to charities, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of an annual plan he started more than a decade ago.
More than 14 million shares of Berkshire's Class B stock were donated to five charities, including those run by his children, according to a statement carried by Bloomberg and seen by Al Arabiya.
Buffett, 91, currently owns 229,016 Class A shares and 276 Class B shares.
He pledged to donate all of his Berkshire shares to several charities after his death, a plan he outlined in his 2019 annual letter to shareholders.
The latest donation will reduce Buffett's fortune to $96.3 billion, enough to bring him down one place in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
It is reported that before the last donation, Omaha's godfather was ranked fifth, behind his friend and charitable partner Bill Gates, while his fortune will drop to less than $100 billion for the first time since September.
Buffett's contribution to the Gates Foundation comes nearly a year after he resigned as trustee of that organization.
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