By Alex Sazonov & Henry Meyer
In his suite at the Four Seasons hotel in New York shortly before Christmas 2010, Bill Gates, now the world’s richest person, got some advice from the world’s No. 82.
Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin says he told Gates how the Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) co-founder could persuade the wealthiest people on the planet to hand over much of their fortunes to charity under the Giving Pledge program organized by Gates and Warren Buffett, Bloomberg Markets will report in its October issue.
“I advised him to try and move this initiative from American soil,” Potanin says during an interview in the offices of his Interros Holding Co. across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. “I said, ‘Bill, make it a real international initiative.’”
