The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting was held on Saturday May 2, 2015, in Omaha, Nebraska.Here is a first-hand account by one of our avid Business Guardian readers.
"Slow down! Stop running!" shouts the security guard.
Slow down? Are you mad? I'd been in the line outside since 4.00am when the doors burst open at seven. I'm in the middle of a pack of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders sprinting through the corridors of the Century Link Centre in Omaha. I feel like Hemingway running with the bulls in Pamplona.
There are more than 40,000 attendees for 18,000 seats in the main auditorium, I haven't come thousands of miles to watch the Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger Show on a remote screen in one of the overflow rooms.
As I accelerate going into one of the entrance tunnels to the main arena a fat man on my left trips on the polished floor and goes down, the crowd surges past him and suddenly we emerge onto the floor of the convention centre. I rush for a seat, sticking a self adhesive "reserved" label with my name on it that I made in Trinidad. Obsessive? Sure–this has been a long time coming. No time to dawdle however. Having secured my seat, I head back out to the main exhibition hall (where Berkshire's 70-plus companies have set up their exhibits) for the annual newspaper tossing competition between Mr Buffett and all comers, including as usual, his good friend and Berkshire board member, Bill Gates.
Thursday:
I landed in Omaha two days ago, flying in with thousands of other pilgrims from all over the world to the "Woodstock for capitalists"–the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. Like other religious festivals, there are certain stations of the cross the true believer must undergo: At one, Gorat's, Warren's favourite steak house, I will be eating a 22 oz T-bone, just like he does, within � hour of landing. My dinner reservations were made months ago by my AirBnB host (hotels having been booked up long before that) and for dessert, another Warren favourite–a root beer float, whatever that is. Outside, after dinner, I pose for photos in front of the famous Gorat's sign and immediately I am asked to take photos for other "Berkers" from China and Dubai. One world, under Buffett, amen.
Friday morning:
I continue on the pilgrimage trail with my host family; good solid Midwesterners, the backbone of America.
We swing by Warren's home, a nice but fairly modest house that he bought in the 1950s and has lived in ever since. No gate, no fences, a multibillionaire with less burglarproofing than me! Omaha is that kind of town. We then drive by his office in Kiewit Plaza–25 workers at the headquarters of a $350 billion company. Is it any wonder I have a significant portion of my net worth invested in this man? This is the bromance of my life, I love Warren Buffett.
Friday noon:
The Exhibition Hall down at the Century Link Centre opens. All the constituent companies that make up the Berkshire Hathaway family have their wares on sale. I eat a Dilly bar from Dairy Queen (another pilgrim station) and then get in the winding check-out line at Fruit of the Loom to buy Berkshire 50th anniversary boxer shorts; 12 cash registers working full time and it still takes � hour to pay for my swag. We're surely going to break last year's record for goods sold at the meeting.
Then into other payment lines at the Bookworm (Berkshire biographies); See's Candies (50th anniversary boxes of chocolates); Brooks shoes (Berkshire 50th running shoes); Oriental Trading (Warren & Charlie rubber ducks); Fechheimer's (Buffett T shirts) and Coca Cola (Berkshire Coke bottles). Imagine my lemming-like voracity and multiply it by over 40,000 times; that's the magnitude of the organism we're dealing with (Berkshire actually now has over one million shareholders). I stagger back to my room with my holy relics and hit my bed early. I have to be up at 3.00 am to prepare for tomorrow's marathon (with a 100 metre sprint in the middle of it).
Saturday:
the 3:30 am streets of Omaha are still dark between the pools of orange light thrown on the pavement by the streetlights.
Other figures wrapped up against the morning's chill are also walking in scurry-bursts towards ground zero: the locked main doors of the Century Link Centre. I find my place in line; I'm a coiled spring, already planning my dash past the earlier birds in front, who have had the gall to get between me and my goal. The doors open at seven.
The line has an international flavour with China, India and Europe (especially Germany) particularly well represented. The crowd is overwhelmingly Midwestern, polite and well behaved.
There is no queue jumping. At dawn, two cowboys from Justin Boots (a Berkshire subsidiary) come riding by on Texas Longhorns followed by a Wells Fargo stagecoach with six horses (Berkshire has a US$28 billion stake in this bank). It is now coming up to seven: gentlemen start your engines, the doors open and we're off.
Saturday 8:30 am
I've returned from the newspaper throwing contest back to the arena floor. In front of me the gorgeous Becky Quick of CNBC is talking to Warren; Charlie Rose is in conversation with Bill Gates. I am now in the room. No video or audio has ever been permitted of this scene. If you don't come in person you can't pull it up on YouTube later.
We all have our pens and paper to capture the wise and humorous words that will issue from the greatest double act in business history: Buffett and Munger. Warren, 84, the warm, amusing, avuncular Democrat and Charlie, 91, the acerbic, witty Republican. Both business geniuses.
In fact, both in the next seven hours bring the crowd to uproarious laughter and applause with their quick wit and funny asides, Warren often setting it up for Charlie's dry zingers. They've been doing this for 50 years!
How much longer can they go on? I'm like a Stones fan who just wants to see them in concert once more before Keith finally snuffs it.
The annual Berkshire movie follows with Warren "The Berkshire Bomber" getting in the ring against Floyd "Money" Mayweather for the title with cameos by Jack Nicholson and other Hollywood A listers.
Mayweather actually fights Paquiao tonight in Vegas for the richest purse in boxing history. Then the curtains part and the two starboys come unto the stage and the real show begins. They will answer approximately 50 unrehearsed questions from the audience and several Wall Street journalists.
Nothing is off limits except what investments Berkshire is thinking of making. It is a world famous annual tour de force.
Here are some highlights:
Q: Should Berkshire have used leverage?
Charlie Munger: If we had used leverage we would have been much bigger but we would have sweated at night and it's crazy to sweat at night.
Warren Buffett: Over financial things (laughter)
Q: How do you network without having gone to a prominent business school?
WB: (dumfounded)
CM: Let me answer this one. You do the best you can (laughter). I didn't go to business school, why should you? You were lucky to avoid what you avoided (more laughter).
WB: Charlie's very Old Testament. He didn't get past Genesis (even more laughter)
Q: Any thoughts on the new Asia Investment Bank?
WB: No idea. (laughter) That's a subject I know nothing about.
CM: I know less on that than you (laughter).
Q: What about the general level of the stock market?
CM: We don't make macroeconomic projections or try to predict where the stock market is heading. We just swim and let the tide take care of itself. The problem with making these economic pronouncements is that eventually people think that they know what they are talking about (laughter). It's much easier to say I'm ignorant.
WB: You can be sure that over the next 10 years you will see things that you didn't think were possible and we will occasionally see things that are good for Berkshire Hathaway both financially and psychologically.
Q: What about China?
CM: I'm a big fan of China's progress. They've actually shot a couple of people and that gets people's attention (laughter).
WB: Now we're getting some practical advice (more laughter).
Q: What accounts for your success?
WB: We stay within the circle of our competence.
CB: Much of our success has not been from being brilliant but simply by avoiding being idiots. (laughter). If people weren't so often wrong, we wouldn't be so rich (more laughter)
Q: Berkshire is big on Coca Cola. Is all that sugar good for you?
WB: 25 per cent of my daily calories come from Coca Cola. I've looked at the stats, six-year-olds have the best life expectancy so I copy their diet (laughter). If I was to eat broccoli, I'd be miserable, I wouldn't have lived this long. I much prefer Coke to some drink on sale down at Whole Foods. They don't smile a lot down at Whole Foods (laughter)
CM: Sugar is an enormously useful substance; it prevents premature softening of the arteries (more laugher).
Q: What is your biggest failure?
WB: Dexter Shoes. In 1993 I paid US$400 million for an enterprise that soon dwindled to zero. Nobody misled me, I simply misjudged. It's even worse than that because I brought it with Berkshire stock which is now worth US$6-7 billion. In fact, I like it when our stock goes down, it makes the stupidity seen smaller. (laughter).
Q: Eurozone currency. Is the Euro a good thing or bad?
CM: It's a noble motivation but a flawed system to put countries that are so different together. The big strains are Greece and Portugal. You can't make a strong partnership with your shiftless, drunken brother in law (laughter)
(To Warren) Have I offended enough people?
WB: I think there are still some more up in the balconies (more laughter)
Q: What are your thoughts on activist shareholders?
WB: The best defence against activism is performance.
CM: I'm trying to think of any activist I'd like to see marry into the family (laughter)
Q: What about economic forecasts?
WB: We think that any company that has an economist has at least one employee too many (laughter). Charlie, can you think of anything more offensive that I've forgotten?
CM: It would be hard to top that one.
Q: What matters to you the most?
CM: Your main duty is to become as rational as you can possibly be. Rationality is a moral duty. Berkshire Hathaway is a temple of rationality. If you have easily removable ignorance and keep it that's dishonourable; to stay stupider than you have to be. I have never considered it enough of a life just to be shrewder than others and accumulate money. You must use it to help society, to help others.
Q: How do you get a lot of friends and have people get to like you?
CM: The only way I got people to like me was to get very rich and very generous.
WB: People will see a lot of virtues when you write a cheque. Look at other people and see why you admire them, and become the qualities that you like.
Q: How do you pick a spouse?
CM: Look for someone with low expectations. (laughter) So when you disappoint each other in some way, which is inevitable, then it won't be so bad. And remember, instead of trying to change your partner, change yourself. It's much easier.
Q: Berkshire now is so big, how long can it continue to grow?
WB: Size is its own anchor. The past rate of increase of Berkshire cannot continue indefinitely, it must inevitably come down.
CM: There are worse things than Berkshire increasing at a slower rate.
WB: Name one
CM: Warren, I have one not too far away
The final grace note from a 91-year-old man contemplating the coming end of a useful and admired life. The crowd, was silent at first and then, slowly a warm applause came which continued to a crescendo. My eyes were already wet from laughing; I don't think anybody noticed.