Nebraska billionaire, philanthropist Walter Scott dies at 90

OMAHA, Neb. – Billionaire Walter Scott, the past apical enforcement of Peter Kiewit Sons Inc. operation steadfast who helped oversee Warren Buffett’s conglomerate and donated to assorted causes, peculiarly operation projects astir Omaha, has died. He was 90.

The Suzanne and Walter Scott Foundation that Scott founded said Scott died Saturday. The instauration did not notation a origin of death.

Scott served arsenic a committee subordinate of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate from 1988 until his death, and adjacent invested alongside Berkshire successful the company's inferior and vigor unit. Scott held astir 8% of Berkshire Hathaway Energy's banal and 105 Class A Berkshire shares with Buffett's Berkshire holding astir each the rest.

Scott, who grew up during the Great Depression aft being calved successful Omaha successful 1931, spent his full vocation moving for the Peter Kiewit Sons’ Inc. — the Omaha-based operation company, which builds large projects each implicit the world. He worked his mode up from overseeing operation projects successful California and New York to go the company’s enforcement vice president successful 1965.

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“You cannot find a amended exemplary for a national than Walter Scott,” Buffett, a longtime friend, told the Omaha World-Herald connected Saturday. “He was fundamentally a builder, whether helium was gathering Kiewit and carnal things oregon gathering his imaginativeness of Omaha oregon Nebraska. He was nonstop.”

When Peter Kiewit died successful 1979, Scott succeeded him arsenic Chairman and CEO and led the institution until 1998. He besides went connected to service arsenic president of a Kiewit spin-off, Level 3 Communications until that steadfast was bought successful 2014.

The wealthiness Scott accumulated allowed him to go a philanthropist. Scott and his precocious woman Suzanne gave ample sums to the University of Nebraska astatine Omaha, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Colorado State University. One of the main buildings astatine UNMC’s caller Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center is called the Suzanne and Walter Scott Cancer Research Tower due to the fact that of their donations.

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Sections of the Joslyn Art Museum and Holland Performing Arts Center successful Omaha are besides named successful grant of the Scotts’ giving. Scott was besides a longtime protagonist of the renowned Omaha zoo, wherever the ample aquarium is named successful grant of him and his wife.

Scott had told the Omaha World-Herald that helium intended for astir each of his idiosyncratic assets to beryllium donated to his idiosyncratic foundation, which supports projects successful Omaha.

“My children were taken attraction of agelong agone — what they marque of their lives is present their ain responsibility,” Scott said to the World-Herald. “Ultimately, astir everything volition spell to the foundation, with the hopes it volition payment my hometown for galore generations to come.”

Walter has been a manager of galore charitable and acquisition organizations and served arsenic president of the boards of the Omaha Zoological Society, Omaha Zoo Foundation, Joslyn Art Museum, Horatio Alger Association, Heritage Services and the Board of Policy Advisors for the Peter Kiewit Institute.

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