The founder of Patagonia, a major US outdoor gear company, has announced that he and his family have donated all of their stock worth $3 billion to environmental conservation groups. Did.
This was announced by Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, a major outdoor gear company headquartered in California, USA, on the company's website.
2% of the shares held by himself and his family will be entrusted to a newly established organization with voting rights in order to maintain the company's philosophy of protecting the environment, and the remaining 98% will be invested in an NPO that conducts environmental protection activities. that it has been moved.
The amount of the donation is 3 billion dollars, which is equivalent to about 420 billion yen in Japanese yen.
At first, Mr. Chouinard was considering selling the company and donating the entire amount, or launching an IPO (initial public offering), but he said that depending on the buyer, the idea of environmental protection might not be followed. He explained that he decided to take the form of combining a trust and a donation to an environmental protection organization.
Mr. Chouinard says that ``the earth has become the only shareholder'' and is a new initiative to invest profits in environmental protection.
In the United States, Mr. Bill Gates, the founder of IT giant Microsoft, has been developing activities to call on the world's richest people to donate more than half of their assets to charity, but all stock donations are expected to contribute to future climate change. It seems that you will be able to throw a stone in the countermeasures.