What Buffett and Gates Discussed at Secret Conference

Secret meeting of world's richest people held in New York Click here

Photo gallery: Click here

Comment: How they could spend the money in Ireland

 

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have something in common besides being the two richest men in the world. They also want to give it all away sooner rather than later.

That was what the meeting in Manhattan was about on May 5th, as first exclusively reported on irishcentral.com.

This ‘giving while living’ idea has become a major mantra for both men, and they are both worried that the billionaires of today are not taking the message seriously enough.

It was something that Gates in particular wanted to get across to the audience of the great and the good who attended, including Oprah Winfrey, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg

They are joined in that belief by Charles Feeney, the ‘secret billionaire’ who first coined the term ‘giving while living,’ and who has personified the trend.

Feeney has donated much of his fortune accumulated through his ownership of Duty Free Shops to Ireland.  A recent television program there blew the lid on just how much.

Essentially, he has underwritten higher education in Ireland—the rocket fuel for the Celtic Tiger ---for the last two decades as well as massively funding reconciliation efforts in Northern Ireland and helping human rights causes across a broad spectrum.

Atlantic Philanthropies, which Feeney founded, will have given all its multibillion-dollar endowment away by around 2020 if current projections are correct. That’s not as easy as it may sound. Atlantic has to give away about $1 million dollars a day, every day of the year to make that target.

​
Nster.com