By Scott Ronalds

A man from Singapore recently paid over $2 million to have lunch with Warren Buffett at a New York steakhouse. It’s a pricey tab for a T-bone, but in support of a good cause. Buffett auctions off an invitation to lunch every year (for up to eight people) on eBay and the proceeds go to a charity that runs anti-poverty programs and serves free meals in San Francisco.

Other financial types who have fetched a hefty sum (for charity) to dine with this year include former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke ($70,000), former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner ($50,000) and Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat ($26,000). These three wouldn’t be at the top of my list, but to each their own. Which begs the question, “If you could have lunch with one investor or financial personality, living or dead, who would it be?”

We posed the question to a few of our managers and got the following responses:

Wil Wutherich (Small-Cap Equity Fund): “Sir Isaac Newton – a hero of mine from a scientific perspective. And yes, he was an investor. In fact, he ran the Royal Mint.”

Brian Eby (Income Fund): “Mark Carney (the Governor of the Bank of England). The first major central bank to raise interest rates will likely be the Bank of England in this cycle and this will likely provide a road map for other central banks. Getting his insights into how he may address the challenges he will face through this process would, I think, be quite interesting.”

Gord O’Reilly (Equity Fund): “Buffett. Has to be.”

Join the conversation and post your response in the Comments section!

[Note: At Steadyhand, we auction off a lunch with Tom Bradley every year at a golf fundraising event. We haven’t raised quite as much as Buffett or the others, but the top bidder enjoys bottomless Diet Coke and walks away with a free investment dictionary. You can’t put a price on that.]