Warren Buffet

Main Source: 28 Business Thinkers who Changed the World, by Rhymer Rigby.

Presented by: Antonia Corporán

The Oracle of Omaha

In Nebraska, in the Berkshire Hathaway annual general meetings, everyone is pleased to listen to Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger talking about Buffet’s business performance and philosophy, and about his perception about economic situation in general.

What has made him the 3rd richest man in the world?

He only invests in companies he understands, whose management he believes in, and that he thinks have good prospects for long-term growth.

He sat out of the dot-com boom

Investing in cigar-butt companies.

He showed business aptitude since his childhood and by the time he graduated he had already bought 40 acres of farmland.

While going to the business school of Nebraska University he read Benjamin Graham’s book The Intelligent Investor . (Cigar-butt companies)

American Express Co. The Coca-Cola Company General ElectricJohnson & Johnson Kraft FoodsWal-martThe Washington Post  Heinz Co.Fruit of the loom

His fortune has increased from  14,500 md a 72,700 md during the last year .

And now Warren Buffet is:

Berkshire Hathaway Chrisis

“I view derivates as time bombs for the economic system, financial weapons of mass destruction. They’re like hell: easy to enter and almost impossible to exit.” –Buffet about derivatives in 2002

That was Berkshire’s worst year and he lost shares in many important companies.

In 2008, most of american investors were having a recession while Mr. Buffet’s was recovering and going back to its golden age

‘I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing.’

85 per cent of his Berkshire Hathaway holdings to charity is expected to go to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The value of the gift was 3.7 billion dollars in 2006.

In 2010 Bill Gates proposed that the wealthy should commit at least half their fortunes to charity:

“…I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions…”

Giving part of his fortune away, he believes, is the best way of compensating for all the good fortune he has enjoyed.