Blackstone And Zillow CEOs Among 7 Billionaires Joining The Giving Pledge

Blackstone cofounder and CEO Stephen Schwarzman has, by our estimation, already given away $600 … [+] million of his $21 billion fortune.

Credit: David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Bloomberg

Seven billionaires signed Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge this year, promising to give the majority of their vast wealth to charity before or after they die, according to an announcement on Monday. This year’s signatories are worth over $40 billion in total, by Forbes’ estimates. Chief among them: Blackstone

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CEO Stephen Schwarzman, whose estimated $21 billion net worth means he has the most to give away.

The Giving Pledge was started a decade ago by Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates with 40 initial signees, some of whom, like Michael Bloomberg and Eli Broad, had already begun to actively give to charitable causes. Altogether, 16 individuals or couples joined the pledge this year, bringing the total number of signees to 216. They range in age from 35 to 97 and hail from 24 different countries. Fifty-two of the signees are from outside the U.S. The pledge is non-binding, which means that the organization can’t force signatories to donate their fortunes. The founders describe the pledge as “a moral commitment.”

“The Giving Pledge is a simple proposal to the world’s wealthiest: join us in giving away the majority of your resources to address society’s most pressing problems,” Buffett said in a statement. And in a year unlike any other—with the coronavirus pandemic raging unchecked around the world and many countries confronting systemic racism and inequality—the organization hopes that “efforts like the Giving Pledge aim to inspire those who have more than they need to give bigger and sooner.”

Here’s some background on the new billionaire signatories:

Stephen Schwarzman

CEO and cofounder of Blackstone

Citizenship: U.S.A.

Net worth: $21 billion

Schwarzman has already given away more than $600 million to philanthropic, cultural and arts organizations and pledged to donate even more. Those gifts helped establish a school studying the ethics of artificial intelligence at Oxford University and, at MIT, a new college focused on AI. He cofounded Blackstone in 1985, helping grow it from a boutique mergers-and-acquisitions advisory business into the world’s largest buyout firm, with some $538 billion in assets. He got his start at Lehman Brothers, but founded his first business—a lawn-mowing operation—at age 14.

José Neves

Founder and CEO of Farfetch

Citizenship: Portugal

Net worth: $2.8 billion

Neves, the man behind online luxury fashion platform Farfetch, was born in Portugal but resides in London, where he founded Farfetch in 2008. Shares of the company, which sells clothing, shoes and accessories from designers like Balenciaga and Prada,, have more than doubled since going public on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2018. Neves launched his own charitable foundation this year, which aims to expand equal access to education in Portugal, among other related initiatives.

Jim Pattison

Founder of the Jim Pattison Group

Citizenship: Canada

Net worth: $6 billion

The 92-year-old Canadian billionaire founded his eponymous Jim Pattison Group in 1961 with the purchase of a single General Motors

GM
dealership for $40,000—financed with a bank loan using both his mortgage and life insurance policy as collateral. Since then, the company has expanded to 25 divisions and includes packaging and food segments. His entertainment holdings include the Guinness World Records franchise and the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! chain. Despite his age, Pattison works every day of the week—including weekends—and has no intention of retiring. In 2017, he gave $75 million to rebuild a Canadian hospital, reportedly the largest donation made by a private citizen to a single medical facility in the country’s history.

Jeff Rothschild

Early Facebook employee

Citizenship: U.S.A.

Net worth: $3.8 billion

Rothschild joined Facebook in 2005 as vice president of infrastructure engineering at the age of 50, making him the oldest executive at the time. He transitioned to an advisory role after five years, before departing in 2015. Before the social network, Rothschild cofounded Veritas, a storage software company, which sold to Symantec

NLOK
in 2004 for $13.5 billion in stock. Rothschild donated $20 million to alma mater Vanderbilt University in 2016, where he also sits on the board of trustees.

Rich Barton

CEO of Zillow

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Citizenship: U.S.A.

Net worth: $2.1 billion

Barton became a billionaire in February, after shares of online real estate site Zillow climbed. He cofounded the site in 2006 and retook the CEO reins in 2019, after spending eight years serving as executive chairman and focusing on another company he cofounded, corporate review site Glassdoor. Barton, who also cofounded online travel booking site Expedia while working at Microsoft

MSFT
, has a family foundation that has made donations mostly to Seattle-area nonprofits.

Bill Gross

Cofounder of PIMCO

Citizenship: U.S.A.

Net worth: $1.5 billion

The bond king helped launch investment management firm PIMCO in 1971 and grow the business into the world’s largest fixed-income investment firm. Gross required PIMCO’s managing directors to give 1% of their annual compensation to the company’s charitable foundation. He departed PIMCO in 2014 (under acrimonious circumstances) and managed a fund for Janus Henderson until his March 2019 retirement. Gross’ family foundation holds over $400 million in assets and gives away $20 million annually, mostly to humanitarian efforts, education and healthcare.

Chad Richison

Founder and CEO of Paycom

Citizenship: U.S.A.

Net worth: $3.4 billion

Richison worked at payroll giant ADP before founding Paycom in 1998 and taking the company, which was one of the first to process payroll completely online, public in 2014. He has donated $57 million thus far to causes ranging from food banks across the state to local charter schools in his home state of Oklahoma. “I want to make a sustainable difference,” Richison recently told Forbes. “In a perfect world, I would identify those opportunities and give well before my dying days so I can see the good the gifts are doing.”