Extremely wealthy, this billionaire decided to make an exceptional donation to charity, thus parting with 95% of his fortune.
Billions of dollars and no longer knowing what to do with them, that’s a (nice) problem to have. For this American billionaire, the solution is ready: he will gradually empty his bank account and then intends to act of philanthropy by donating a staggering amount of his fortune upon his death.
It was by co-founding Kinder Morgan, one of the most successful companies in the energy sector in the United States, that this man, originally from Houston, Texas, made his fortune several decades ago. Its preferred sector: oil terminals and pipelines, hydrocarbon transport and storage infrastructures well known to industrialists. Still the main shareholder of this multinational which is now worth no less than 40 billion dollars, the businessman Richard Kinder – currently in 266th place among the richest people in the world according to Forbes – made a big decision: to give away 95% of his fortune, now estimated at $11.2 billion, after his death.
With his wife Nancy, they launched the Kinder Foundation at the end of the 1990s, which works for a better daily life in the city of Houston. Their areas of action? Education, the arts, medical research and even green spaces. For example, they have already planned to release the tidy sum of $27 million in the coming months to completely renovate one of the largest parks in their beloved city. When they die, they will therefore leave an envelope of 10 billion dollars allocated to charities and public institutions.
Questioned by the American television channel ABC13, the couple as rich as Croesus indicated that they would like “leave the world a little better” than the one he found. “We always found that the best thing to do was to try to give away a lot of what we had. That’s what we’ve done all our lives, and what we will do when we die.”added the retirees.
And the legacy left to their clan? “I want our grandchildren to be proud of us, and I think they are. And I want them to know that this is what we expect of them when they grow up. They have to give back,” added the billionaire’s wife.
