The $2.6m ‘Buffett lunch’ with a difference

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s annual lunch auction drew a top offer of $2.6 million (€2.3 million) with more than half a day remaining in the fundraiser.

The winner gets to bring seven friends to share a meal with the billionaire at New York’s Smith and Wollensky steakhouse.

It was the highest offer in the charity event as of 4am in San Francisco, according to EBay’s website and compares with a winning bid of $2.35 million last year.

The latest auction began on Sunday night and runs until 7.30 pm on Friday, Competition generally accelerates on the last day. Buffett (85) raised more than $20 million in the first 16 years of the auction to benefit Glide, the San Francisco-based organisation that serves about 2,000 meals a day to the homeless, hosts support groups through its women’s centre for abuse victims and provides treatment for drug addiction.

The auction is "one of the most important ways of raising money that we have ever had," the Reverend Cecil Williams, a co-founder of Glide, said in an interview before bidding began.

Glide works “very hard to bring about a new kind of way of responding to people, and especially to people who are looked upon as homeless, people who are looked upon as not being a part of the community, those who are strangers, and those who fall through the cracks of society.”

Glide was brought to Buffett’s attention by his first wife, Susan, a volunteer for the foundation.

The billionaire pledged in 2006 to donate the majority of his fortune to charity, mostly to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

- Bloomberg