NEW YORK: Warren Buffett has donated another US$5.3bil of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities, his biggest annual donation since he began making them in 2006.

Buffett’s donation boosted his overall giving to the charities to about US$57bil, including to the family charities in the last two Novembers.

The latest donation, announced last Friday, included about 13 million Berkshire Class B shares.

Buffett donated 9.93 million shares to the Gates Foundation, and has donated more than US$43bil of Berkshire shares there overall.

He also donated 993,035 shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his late first wife, and 695,122 shares to each of three charities led by his children Howard, Susan and Peter: the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the Sherwood Foundation and the NoVo Foundation.

 - Reuters