OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Paying more than $1 million for lunch may seem excessive, but when the price includes a private audience with revered investor Warren Buffett some people think it's worth it.
The annual online auction for lunch with Berkshire Hathaway's billionaire chairman and CEO started Sunday and runs through Friday evening. Past winners of the auction say the money they paid was a good investment, and they're glad it benefited the Glide Foundation, which provides social services to the poor and homeless in San Francisco.
Buffett said he always tries to make the several-hour lunch worthwhile, and he's never had a complaint.
“You want a person that bids the most to know they're getting something exclusive,” said Buffett, who only offers one such lunch a year.
Perhaps the interest in a private audience with Buffett shouldn't come as a surprise since roughly 36,000 people attended Berkshire's annual meeting last month to hear him talk. Buffett is one of the world's richest men and biggest philanthropists, and he's regarded as one of the best investors ever.
Investor Mohnish Pabrai said the $650,100 he and another investor paid to win the auction in 2007 seems like a wonderful value, especially since the average price paid in the three years since then has topped $2 million.
“It was the bargain of the century,” said Pabrai, who manages Pabrai Investment Funds in Irvine, Calif.
Last year's auction set a new record for the most expensive charity item eBay ever sold when an anonymous American paid $2.6 million to spend time with Buffett.
In 2009, Canadian investment firm Salida Capital paid $1.68 million to dine with Buffett. And that price represented a discount over the record $2.11 million a Chinese investment fund manager paid in 2008.
Buffett said he lets the auction winner determine the topics of conversation at the lunch, which is usually held at New York's Smith and Wollensky steak house. He said several of the winners have wanted to talk about their families.
“I don't set the agenda at all at that price, and incidentally, I don't leave a 15 percent tip either,” Buffett said.
Pabrai said he doesn't think he spent hardly any time talking about investing with Buffett at the lunch. He said he was grateful to spend several hours with a unique individual like Buffett and thinks people make too much of the lunch price, which is a charitable donation.
Salida Capital CEO Courtenay Wolfe said she believes the lunch was an incredible and inspirational experience, and she and her partners were glad to make a sizeable personal donation to Glide.
“We did it for the opportunity to meet Warren Buffett and as a way to thank our top clients and for philanthropy,” she said.
Buffett has supported Glide ever since his late first wife, Susan, introduced him to Glide's founder, the Rev. Cecil Williams. And the lunch auction has become an important source of money for Glide, which runs on a roughly $17 million annual budget.
Glide provides meals, health care, job training, rehabilitation and housing support to the poor and homeless, and Buffett has praised Glide's efficient and effective approach.
“We are deeply grateful that Mr. Buffett shares our unwavering commitment to help our neediest neighbors — regardless of background or circumstance,” Williams said.
Buffett is gradually giving away the bulk of his fortune over time. The plan he launched in 2006 will eventually split most of his shares of Berkshire stock between five charitable foundations, with the largest chunk going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The company Buffett leads owns roughly 80 subsidiaries including insurance, furniture, clothing, jewelry and candy companies, restaurants and natural gas and corporate jet firms, and has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.
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