Warren Buffet (CNN)

I had lunch on Friday with the most successful investor of all time. He took me out for a steak. We drank Cherry Coke, shot the breeze about his life and his outlook for the future. He offered to pay the bill. His company earns around $200 million a week so he’d easily covered his costs by the time we’d finished eating.

With a net worth of $42 billion, Warren E Buffett is the poster boy of modern capitalism. Hailing from Omaha, Nebraska, where he still lives, Buffett started his career as a professional investor in 1956 when he created the Buffett Associates Ltd, managing $105,000 of funds. Just $100 of the money was his own. 10 years later, the fund was worth $44 million, a return of 1156%. Hello Mr. Buffett.

From there, he went on to build an empire, acquiring Berkshire Hathaway , a failing textiles business, and then investing in other firms under the Berkshire umbrella. Today Berkshire Hathaway has a market capitalization of $167 billion and is one of the most successful companies in the world. Buffett has built what he calls his “masterpiece,” his Sistine Chapel.

Now 76 years old but still as energetic as ever, Buffett has turned his attentions more towards giving something back. Each year he meets with a small number of business students from across the US, imparting pearls of wisdom upon their sponge-like brains, holding swathes of eager young minds enthralled by his love of investing and passion for life. Last Friday, I was lucky enough to be one of the few Penn students to meet with him. And what an honour it was.

For a man worth 6 times the Penn endowment fund, Warren Buffett is as humble as they come. Not interested in the glitz and glamour of billionaire life, he still lives in the same house he bought in 1958 for $31,500 and always drives his own car. Last Friday, he drove four Whartonites from Berkshire Hathaway’s headquarters to Gorat’s Steakhouse for lunch. No chauffers, no bodyguards, no overtures to grandure–Buffett is reassuringly unassuming and a pleasure to be around.

Last year, he shocked the world with his generosity, making the largest philanthropic donation in history. Buffett announced plans to transfer shares in Berkshire Hathaway totalling $30.7 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and over $6 billion to other charities.

It’s unlikely you’ll ever hear of such compassion and altruism again, such was the extent of his charity. But to Warren Buffett, who recently told Fortune magazine he “agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society”, this monumental act of philanthropy is merely the natural reallocation of wealth to a society that has given him so much.

After lunch and a few photos, it was time to go. A handshake and a smile and Buffett was off into the Omaha sunset. It was short but very sweet, for I had sat in the presence of greatness.

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