Mystery bidder offers $3,456,789 for lunch with Warren Buffett (Rs 22 crore 81 lakh 48 Thousands )

The cost of the average restaurant meal has risen 2.7 per cent in the past year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, but if that looks steep against an economy wide inflation rate of 1.1 per cent, it is nothing compared to the rising cost of lunching with Warren Buffett.

An anonymous bidder has paid $3,456,789 for a lunch date with the investment guru and founder of Berkshire Hathaway, some 47 per cent more than the winner of the charity auction last year.

Mr Buffett will meet the winning bidder and up to seven friends for an intimate meal, in what has become an annual tradition that has netted more than $23m in total for the San Francisco charity, Glide.

Mr Buffett’s late wife Susan used to be a volunteer at Glide, which offers meals, medical testing and other services to homeless and low-income people in the San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Volunteers and supporters sang and cheered as the five-day auction moved into its final minutes on Friday night, and a late bid swelled the proceeds from $2.8m, where bidding had hovered for most of the day, to a final total that matched the all-time record from 2012.

Reverend Cecil Williams, co-founder of Glide, said he was astonished by the result. “This is a banner year,” he said, “and this is truly a power lunch for the people.”

The auction is now in its 17th year, and the price of lunch with Mr Buffett began rising dramatically after it switched to the online site eBay in 2003, opening it to the investor’s followers all around the world.

Since that first online auction, the price of the average restaurant meal has risen 44 per cent, while Mr Buffett’s 2016 lunch is 1,282 per cent higher. Berkshire’s share price is up 200 per cent over the same 13-year period.

In some cases the experience of meeting Mr Buffett can be career-changing for lunch guests. Guy Spier wrote a book about how the advice and inspiration he received improved his approach to investing, for example.

And Ted Weschler, a Virginia hedge fund manager who won with bid of $2.6m in both 2010 and 2011, so impressed Mr Buffett that he offered him a job. Today, Mr Weschler runs a $9bn slice of Berkshire’s $128bn equity portfolio.

Mr Buffett will meet the winning bidder and guests at the famed Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York City on a mutually agreed upon date