Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett turned a failing textile mill into one of the largest companies in the world and lived in the same house for seventy years. Born in Omaha in 1930, the son of a stockbroker who became a congressman, he sold chewing gum and Coca-Cola door to door as a child, filed his first tax return at thirteen to deduct his bicycle, and had bought a farm by sixteen. He was rejected by Harvard Business School and went to Columbia instead, which was fortunate: Benjamin Graham taught there. Graham's idea — that a share is a fractional claim on a business with an intrinsic value that can be estimated, and that the market's price is a separate thing that occasionally offers it cheaply — is the whole of Buffett's method. He ran an investment partnership from 1956 and bought control of Berkshire Hathaway, a New England textile company, in 1965 out of pique after its owner tried to shave a fraction of a cent off an agreed buyback price. He called it the dumbest stock he ever bought. He used it as a holding company instead, and the insurance businesses he acquired supplied float — premiums held before claims are paid — that he invested. He modified Graham's approach under Charlie Munger's influence, paying fair prices for excellent businesses rather than low prices for mediocre ones: See's Candies, Coca-Cola, American Express, BNSF, Apple. He has pledged to give away over 99 per cent of his fortune, and takes a salary of $100,000. His annual letters to shareholders are read as a course in business by people who own no shares at all. Munger, his partner for six decades, died in 2023.
- Lived: 1930 CE – ?
- Nationality: American
- Roles: investor, businessman, philanthropist
