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Buffett charity auction attracts US$2m bid

A lunch date with billionaire investor Warren Buffett was sold to a Chinese hedge-fund manager yesterday for more than US$2.1 million during an online auction, more than tripling last year's record of US$650,100.

Zhao Danyang (趙丹陽), who manages the Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund in Shenzhen, won the auction with a US$2,110,100 bid, said Denise Lamott, a spokeswoman for the Glide Foundation.

Zhao made the bid for lunch with the Berkshire Hathaway Inc chairman and CEO under the screen name “greenteabug.”

The auction benefits the foundation, which provides social services to the poor and homeless in San Francisco.

This is the sixth year Buffett has auctioned a lunch online.

Glide, a San Francisco charity, will receive all proceeds.

It was Buffett’s ninth annual auction to benefit Glide, and the fourth consecutive time the winning bid set a record.

A total of nine bidders placed 78 offers over five days, the eBay Inc auction site said.

Lamott said a crowd of Glide employees, board members, donors and others gathered to watch the results at a San Francisco hotel last night and were jubilant.

“There were screams, shouts — it was amazing in here,” Lamott said in a phone interview.

In 2006, Buffett announced his plan to give away the bulk of his nearly US$49 billion fortune over time. Most of Buffett’s shares of Berkshire stock will go to five charitable foundations, with the largest share going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Buffett, the world’s richest person according to Forbes magazine, will entertain the winner and seven companions at New York’s Smith & Wollensky steakhouse and answer virtually any question except about what he’s buying and selling.

Money managers Mohnish Pabrai and Guy Spier dined with the Berkshire Hathaway Inc chairman on June 25 after paying a record US$650,100 to win last year’s auction.

“Warren Buffett has tremendous cachet,” said Adam Galinsky, the Kaplan professor of ethics and decision in management at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

“If you get that opportunity to interact with him, people are going to associate that status with you,” he said.
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