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Reed Hastings: He was also the head of Netflix for many years
Photo: PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP
Netflix co-founder and former CEO Reed Hastings is donating two million shares of the streaming service to the California-based Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF). This is reported by the Wall Street Journal. Given the current price of Netflix shares, the package is worth approximately $1.1 billion.
According to a document available to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Hastings' family foundation now holds 2,991,541 shares in the streaming service, plus stock options. The business magazine Forbes currently estimates Reed Hastings' fortune at around $5.4 billion.
The Netflix co-founder has long been known in the USA as a recurring major donor. On several occasions, large amounts of millions flowed to US educational institutions in his name. In 2020, for example, Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin donated $120 million to a college fund, Variety outlines.
Mark Zuckerberg has also donated to the SVCF
The SVCF in question is a non-profit foundation based in Mountain View that, among other things, manages so-called donor-advised funds (DAFs), in which donors can take on an advisory role in the later use of their donations. The SVCF has received large donations in the past from tech giants such as Mark Zuckerberg and Jan Koum, one of the founders of WhatsApp. According to media reports, Reed Hastings has also previously worked with the SVCF. The US foundation's focus areas include early childhood development and housing costs.
According to the Wall Street Journal article, Hastings' donation to the SVCF is immediately tax deductible. The newspaper also emphasizes that large gifts of shares in particular can offer executives significant tax advantages. However, critics of DAFs, the article states, are critical of the immediate tax deduction approach because donated funds can sometimes lie dormant for years.
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