Buffett charity lunch bid hits record $1.51 mn

Warren Buffett’s lunch auction to benefit a San Francisco charity has drawn a top offer of $1.51 million with four days of bidding remaining, putting the annual fundraiser ahead of last year’s pace.

The weeklong auction on EBay, which began yesterday, has generated at least four bids of more than $1 million, according to the website. Last year, bidding reached $400,100 on the third day and set a record of $2.63 million in the final hours. This year’s auction closes June 10.

Buffett, the 80-year-old investor who is chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway, has raised more than $8 million over the past decade for San Francisco-based Glide Foundation, which serves meals to the needy. Buffett’s first wife Susan, who died in 2004, had volunteered with the organisation.

Buffett’s “generosity, and that of the winning bidders, has provided meals, health care, job training, rehabilitation and housing support to help lift people out of these hard times,” Reverend Cecil Williams, Glide’s founder, said in a statement.

The auction winner gets lunch for eight with Buffett in New York at Smith & Wollensky, the steakhouse. Buffett, who’s revered by other investors, turned Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire from a failing textile mill to a $190 billion seller of bricks, power and hurricane insurance.