Melinda French Gates says Warren Buffett’s last will ‘didn’t surprise me’

Melinda French Gates recently said that Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett’s recent plan for what will happen to his vast fortune after his death did not come as a shock to her.

She said in a new interview New York times “It didn’t surprise me,” Buffett said in an interview when he revealed that the vast majority of his wealth would now go to a charitable trust that his three adult children would manage when he dies.

The longtime Berkshire Hathaway CEO, whose net worth was estimated at about $138.3 billion as of Monday afternoon, offered insight into some of the provisions of his current will in recent press releases from the conglomerate and Late June interview With the Wall Street Journal.

Buffett told the Wall Street Journal that the Gates Foundation, which French Gates founded in 2000 with then-husband Bill Gates, “will not receive any money after my death.” The same day the interview was published, the 93-year-old “Oracle of Omaha” also said in a Berkshire press release that “lifetime commitments” he made to donate to four family-affiliated charities and the Gates Foundation “expire upon my death or earlier if certain circumstances occur….”

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His three sons will be tasked with deciding as a group how to distribute Buffett’s fortune, according to The Journal.

Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, plays bridge at an event on the sidelines of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S., Sunday, May 6, 2019. (Houston Cofield/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)

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“It was a decision that I think he was making over time, and I knew he was making,” French Gates told the New York Times of Buffett’s plan for the fund. “The other thing that’s really important is that he’s donated a huge amount through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. So I think that was just a good evolution in his thinking about how he wanted to donate.”

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In June, Buffett gifted the Gates Foundation more than 9.93 million Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock. The foundation, which French Gates left to pursue her own philanthropic efforts, has received about $43 billion from him over the years, according to a tweet from the foundation’s CEO, Mark Suzman.

The June contribution to the Gates Foundation coincided with a donation of approximately 993,000 shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and gifts of more than 695,100 shares each to the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation.

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Buffett owned 207,963 Class A shares and 2,586 Class B shares of Berkshire after the donation. The latter type of Berkshire stock has gained more than 24% over the past 12 months.

American philanthropist Melinda French Gates listens during a panel discussion titled “Digital Infrastructure: Pooling the Benefits” at the Annual Spring Meetings at the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 2023. (Stephanie Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, French Gates, a billionaire with a net worth estimated at $11 billion according to Forbes, has so far pledged to commit $2 billion to “expanding women’s power and influence” through her company, Pivotal Ventures.