On July 3, 2006, Warren Buffett drove to the U.S. Bank branch in downtown Omaha, walked in, went downstairs, and opened his safe-deposit box. He removed a piece of paper, a certificate for 121,737 shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock. It was worth about $11 billion. The money from the sale of those shares, a fraction of his Berkshire holdings, would be the first tranche in his program to give away virtually all his wealth.
That bank visit was a bookend in Buffett’s life, a fittingly financial signal event in the life story of the man widely regarded as the world’s greatest investor. He told Fortune at the time that it reminded him of a visit to that same bank, then called Omaha National, almost 70 years earlier, an event that in retrospect seems the other bookend in Buffett’s financial life. He was 6 years old. His father set up a savings account for him and put $20 in it.
