Warren Buffett Lunch Commands $351,100 on eBay
Posted on: Friday, 1 July 2005, 14:11 CDT
NEW YORK -- A bidder appears to have won lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett after offering $351,100 in a weeklong auction on eBay Inc.'s Web site that ended Thursday night.
According to the Web site, the top bidder was "hanka3153."
The bidder, who could not immediately be identified, outbid rivals including Mohnish Pabrai, a managing partner of Pabrai Investment Funds in Lake Forest, California, and Singapore resident Jason Choo, who won the auction last year.
Since 2000, Buffett has donated lunches to benefit the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco non-profit organization that offers programs for the poor, hungry and homeless.
As in previous years, the billionaire will host the winner and up to seven friends for lunch in either Omaha, Nebraska, where Buffett lives and works, or in New York.
Pabrai has bid for the lunches for three years and lost every time. He said he was a passionate disciple of Buffett for more than a decade and would bid again next year.
"I have learned a tremendous amount from him," Pabrai told Reuters after learning he lost the bid. "I can never repay the tuition and the lunch is to thank him for whatever he has done."
Buffett, who runs Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is known for his folksy manner and long-term approach to investing in companies he considers undervalued.
The Rev. Cecil Williams, who heads Glide, has called Buffett "a very powerful person who undoubtedly feels very strongly about our programs. He's always there, helping, reaching out."
The lunches began after Buffett's wife Susan, who died last year, introduced him to Williams' Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. Until moving to eBay in 2003, the auctions were held in San Francisco.
With a recent net worth of $44 billion, Buffett trails only Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft Corp., on Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest people. Gates is a Berkshire director and bridge partner of Buffett's.
(Additional reporting by Wei Gu)
Source: By Jonathan Stempel/Reuters
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