Billionaire gives away $4.4 billion company

The founder of clothing brand Patagonia has made the extraordinary decision to donate his multi-billion dollar business to a non-profit.

Billionaire giving away his $4.4 billion company. Picture: Getty Images

The billionaire owner of outdoor apparel brand Patagonia and his family are giving the company to a non-profit in a bid to help fight climate change.

After founding the business almost 50 years ago, Yvon Chouinard – along with his spouse and two grown sons – decided against going public or selling, instead choosing to transfer ownership of the $4.4 billion dollar company to a trust and a non-profit organisation. Operations will still remain in the family, however, with both entities still overseen by the Chouinards and family members staying on the Patagonia board.

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. Picture: Ben Gabbe/Getty Images/AFP

“Instead of ‘going public’, you could say we’re ‘going purpose’,” Mr Chouinard said in a statement explaining the move, reported The New York Times.

“Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth.”

The trust in question, called the Patagonia Purpose Trust, will protect the company’s existing values, while the non-profit organisation, Holdfast Collective, will be using the profits generated by Patagonia to help fund movements towards climate change prevention, Mr Chouinard explained.

Patagonia itself will continue to run a for-profit company, donating 1 per cent of sales to environmental non-profit groups — under the guidance of chief executive Ryan Gellert.

“It’s been nearly 50 years since we began our experiment in responsible business, and we are just getting started,” Mr Chouinard said.

‘Instead of ‘going public’, you could say we’re ‘going purpose’.’ Picture: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/AFP

“If we have any hope of a thriving planet, much less a thriving business, in 50 years from now, it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have. This is another way we’ve found to do our part.”

The 83-year-old world-class mountain climber has previously said he “never even wanted to be in business”.

“But I hang onto Patagonia because it’s my resource to do something good,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2012. “It’s a way to demonstrate that corporations can lead examined lives.”

“Instead of exploiting natural resources to make shareholder returns, we are turning shareholder capitalism on its head by making the Earth our only shareholder,” Patagonia board chair Charles Conn wrote in an opinion piece in Fortune magazine on Wednesday.