Warren Buffett Lunch Sells for $ 620,100

NEW YORK: Yongping Duan of Palo Alto has coined $ 620,100 in an eBay auction for a steak dinner with legendary investor, Warren Buffett.

The winning bid easily tops last year's record bid of $ 351,100 for the Buffett dinner.

The dinner, auctioned as a fundraiser for San Francisco's Glide Foundation, is an opportunity for Duan and seven of his guests to speak with the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on a broad range of topics except for what he's buying and selling now.

Earlier this week, Buffett said that he would give away 85 percent of his $ 44 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four other charities.

Bufett, like entertainers Don Ho and Tiny Tim, is an aficionado of the ukulele; and the tycoon, whose Berkshire owns Dairy Queen, donated a specially-made, inscribed DQ uke to another charity auction.

Buffett, the 75-year-old chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has offered lunches for up to eight people to benefit the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco non-profit that helps the poor, hungry and homeless since 2000.

Susan Buffett, the billionaire's late wife, worked for the charity, which has said its annual budget is $ 12 million.

"I learned a lot from Warren Buffett and his philosophy," Duan said in an interview Friday morning. "I wanted to find a chance to say thanks to him. I have also looked at Glide, and they do very good work."

Duan alse mentioned that his family's Enlight Foundation will provide the donation, and plans to take his wife and friends to the lunch.

This year's lunch has been venued at a Manhattan steakhouse. Its parent Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group Inc. is donating $ 10,000 to Glide.

Buffett took over Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire in 1965, and transformed it from a struggling textile maker into a $ 142 billion company through investments in undervalued securities and purchases of well-managed, easy-to-understand businesses.

At the lunch, the billionaire plans to talk about pretty much anything other than what he is buying and selling.

Duan used to run a consumer electronics business in China.

He said he plans to ask Buffett "when you have too much money in your hand, and don't find very good targets, what do you do? I believe he's very good at this kind of thing."