He’ll have the steak

OMAHA, Neb. – A Chinese investment fund manager won the chance to have lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett by bidding $2.1 million in the most expensive charity auction ever held on eBay.

Zhao Danyang, of the Hong Kong-based Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund, won the auction, which ended Friday evening with a bid of $2,110,100. A spokeswoman for the Glide Foundation, which receives all the proceeds from the auction, identified the winner Saturday. Glide provides social services to the poor and homeless in San Francisco. The foundation operates on a $12 million annual budget, spokeswoman Denise Lamott said.

“It almost feels like a miracle,” Glide’s founder, the Rev. Cecil Williams, said in a statement. “We are amazed and ready to continue our work of breaking the cycles of poverty.”

Last year’s lunch brought in $650,100.

Zhao and up to seven friends will dine with Buffett at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York City. The investment philosophy Zhao’s fund describes on its Web site is similar to Buffett’s approach of finding companies with an enduring competitive advantage that are selling for significantly less than they are worth. Buffett is chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which owns more than 60 subsidiaries including insurance, clothing, furniture, jewelry and candy companies, restaurants, natural gas and corporate jet firms.