A winning bidder in a charity auction will pay $115,000 for a chance to lunch with Bridgewater Associates founder and billionaire investor Ray Dalio.
(Bloomberg) — A winning bidder in a charity auction will pay $115,000 for a chance to lunch with Bridgewater Associates founder and billionaire investor Ray Dalio.
Dalio will match the bid in a donation to the David Lynch Foundation. Its Meditate New York program seeks to provide meditation services to 10,000 front-line and health care workers in 40 hospitals across the state.
The auction started heating up on Tuesday, when bids opened at $22,500. The foundation’s Board Executive Chairman Mark Axelowitz, a managing director at a global investment bank, noted that the action often picks up as the deadline nears. It closed just after 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
Watch more: Ray Dalio Talks Money, Debt, and US Political Landscape (Video)
Dalio is among a coterie of hedge fund legends who practice transcendental meditation, a technique that involves the repetition of words or phrases.
“It helps slow things down so that I can act calmly even in the face of chaos, just like a ninja in a street fight,” Dalio tweeted last year.
The David Lynch Foundation held a similar auction in December for a lunch with billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who matched the winning $165,000 bid. Ackman has been featured in three other auctions for the foundation since 2019, matching as much as $210,000 in November 2020, Axelowitz said.
In April, the nonprofit Council for Economic Education auctioned off a lunch with Dalio, with the winning bid going for $80,000.
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