The price of an appointment
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Mahmudur Rahman
Warren Buffet, the US billionaire financier enjoys steak. There are times he likes to share this enjoyment with others. Then again, there is one occasion every year that he will lunch at the Smith and Wollensky steakhouse in New York with eight, complete strangers. So what's so special about that?
To begin with breakfast, lunch or dinner with a man worth $47 billion wouldn't happen without a very, very good reason most of it on Buffet's part. Then of course is the fact that one of those eight strangers must have put in an online bid for the meal. Proceedings of the bid would go to the Glide Foundation, a non-profit organisation that works in San Francisco's Tenderloin district offering meals, health care, child care, housing and job training for the poor and homeless. The exercise brings to the fore once again that even the USA has its own share of all the issues that bedevil our own society. The issues, the lack of funding and the philanthropists make it sound all too familiar.
The lunch time conversation that will inevitably take place must be a fascinating experience though none of the bid winners have so far really talked about it. Could Buffet have afforded to match the bid? Probably. Why doesn't he? Because he lives a personally frugal life and will give away 85% of all his assets to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities when he and his wife pass away.
Buffet has a different approach to business than Donald Trump. The latter has no compulsions about appearing on a TV show in which he steers young graduates as they match their mettle in business investments. One of the group is left standing at the end with the prospect of joining one of his firms with a lucrative job. It is the Trump way of recruiting high flyers.
Buffet prefers the softer approach and is known for the humour he injects into the most clinical of business discussions.
It would seem that an appointment with him has its worth in money too-even if it is for charity. And to think that lobbyists get sneered at.
The 79-year old Buffet began donating the lunches after his first wife Susan, who died in 2004, introduced him to Glide and its founder Rev. Cecil Williams. The lunches have been held for the past 10 years and raised more than $ 5.9 million. The record bid is $2,110,100 in 2008 by Hong Kong-based investor Zhao Danyang while last year the bid was won by Salida Capital Corp, a Toronto-based wealth management firm for.
There are no prizes for guessing who foots the lunch bill. (The writer can be reached at e-mail: mahmudrahman@gmail.com)
Warren Buffet, the US billionaire financier enjoys steak. There are times he likes to share this enjoyment with others. Then again, there is one occasion every year that he will lunch at the Smith and Wollensky steakhouse in New York with eight, complete strangers. So what's so special about that?
To begin with breakfast, lunch or dinner with a man worth $47 billion wouldn't happen without a very, very good reason most of it on Buffet's part. Then of course is the fact that one of those eight strangers must have put in an online bid for the meal. Proceedings of the bid would go to the Glide Foundation, a non-profit organisation that works in San Francisco's Tenderloin district offering meals, health care, child care, housing and job training for the poor and homeless. The exercise brings to the fore once again that even the USA has its own share of all the issues that bedevil our own society. The issues, the lack of funding and the philanthropists make it sound all too familiar.
The lunch time conversation that will inevitably take place must be a fascinating experience though none of the bid winners have so far really talked about it. Could Buffet have afforded to match the bid? Probably. Why doesn't he? Because he lives a personally frugal life and will give away 85% of all his assets to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities when he and his wife pass away.
Buffet has a different approach to business than Donald Trump. The latter has no compulsions about appearing on a TV show in which he steers young graduates as they match their mettle in business investments. One of the group is left standing at the end with the prospect of joining one of his firms with a lucrative job. It is the Trump way of recruiting high flyers.
Buffet prefers the softer approach and is known for the humour he injects into the most clinical of business discussions.
It would seem that an appointment with him has its worth in money too-even if it is for charity. And to think that lobbyists get sneered at.
The 79-year old Buffet began donating the lunches after his first wife Susan, who died in 2004, introduced him to Glide and its founder Rev. Cecil Williams. The lunches have been held for the past 10 years and raised more than $ 5.9 million. The record bid is $2,110,100 in 2008 by Hong Kong-based investor Zhao Danyang while last year the bid was won by Salida Capital Corp, a Toronto-based wealth management firm for.
There are no prizes for guessing who foots the lunch bill. (The writer can be reached at e-mail: mahmudrahman@gmail.com)