A hero

In 2006, Warren Buffet over $30 billion to charity.

In fact, it is not the figure that impresses me the most (even though it is bigger than the GDP of most countries). What I like the most about what Buffet has done is the selflessness of how he did it, and the thought he put into it.

There is a "Buffet Foundation" (which inherited most of his billionaire wife's fortune), but Buffet decided that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would do a better job. Most people would put the money into something bearing their own name.

The gift consists of 10 million shares in Buffet's company, Berkshire Hathaway. Each year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gets 5% of the shares from the gift (500,000 the first year, 475,000 the next, etc). This is a very well thought out design. It must give many Berkshire Hathaway employees a fantastic sense of purpose in their work. As long as they manage to grow the company at 5%, the size of the annual donation will never fall. The foundation gets a fairly steady stream of income in the form of these shares every year, and can gradually build up its own investment and fund management capabilities to handle this kind of fortune.

Warren Buffet still lives in the house he bought in 1958, which is thought to be worth about $700,000 (less than the one I live in). He says: "There's nothing material I want very much", and receives only a $100,000 salary from Berkshire Hathaway.

He is one of my heroes.