By Jacey Fortin @ NYTimes.com Business Day, June 10

A bidder on eBay offered nearly $2.7 million to have lunch with the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, as part of an annual auction to benefit a nonprofit organization in San Francisco.

The winner, who was not named, offered $2,679,001 just minutes before the five-day auction closed on Friday. He or she, along with up to seven friends, will share a lunch with Mr. Buffett at Smith & Wollensky in Manhattan [....]

Mr. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, has been participating in this event since 2000. The money raised goes to support Glide, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that provides a variety of services for poor and marginalized people including food — almost 800,000 meals per year — shelter and child care.

Glide has an annual budget of $18 million, Janice Mirikitani and Reverend Cecil Williams, the organization’s founders, said in a telephone interview [....]

This year’s bid was not the highest ever. In 2012 and 2016, Reuters reported, anonymous bidders offered $3,456,789 to dine with Mr. Buffett. A total of 41 people bid for the lunch.

One of the top bidders of years past, Ted Weschler, a hedge fund manager from Virginia, won in 2010 and again 2011. That was how he first met Mr. Buffett, and he so impressed the billionaire that he was hired as a top money manager at Berkshire Hathaway in 2011 [....]