Why? Some of the most venal, greedy, and ruthless people in history made their money then turned to philanthropy to improve their image. I would argue that it was downright predictable, and so would Alfred Nobel. In fact using charity to either improve your public image (as in Gates and many others) is probably only matched by people like Jimmy Saville using charity to give themselves license to continue committing crimes.

What’s surprising to me is that it still works!