Reuters |  A bidder is offering to pay more than $1.5 million for
a steak lunch with  billionaire investor Warren Buffett, driving the
top bid more than $500,000 higher in seven minutes as the annual charity
auction on eBay’s Web site heads into the homestretch.

The top bidder, whose identity is being kept anonymous, appears to be a
proxy bidder. Such bidders tell eBay in advance how much they are
willing to bid and are awarded the top bid if someone else bids less.

Between 7:33 and 7:40 Friday morning, a competitor submitted six bids, starting at $1 million and then rising in $100,000 increments, only to be topped by the current high bidder, whose screen name is “s***l.”

The five-day auction ends at 10:30 p.m. Friday night. The winner and up to seven friends will dine with the world’s third-richest person at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in midtown Manhattan.

Proceeds benefit the Glide Foundation, a nonprofit in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district that offers meals, health care, child care, housing and job training for the poor and homeless. Smith & Wollensky is also donating $10,000.

The highest bid in the 11th annual auction remains short of the previous record $2.11 million paid in 2008 by Zhao Danyang, a Hong Kong investor. Wealth manager Salida Capital Corp of Toronto won with a $1.68 million bid in 2009.

Buffett, 79, has built an estimated $47 billion fortune running Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which operates about 80 businesses and has tens of billions of dollars of investments.

The 10 previous auctions have raised more than $5.9 million for Glide. In 2006, Buffett pledged most of his wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities.