워런 버핏

<Warren Buffett on Business ; principles from sage of Omaha> by Richard J. Connors

Contents

1. Shareholder as Partners
“Although our form is corporate, our attirude is partnership.”

2. Corporate Culture
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things diffently.”

3. Corporate Governance
“At Berkshire, board members travel the same road as shareholders.”

4. Berkshire Managers
“They love their businesses, they think like owners, and they exude integrity and ability.”

5. Communication
“As managers, Charlie and I want to give to our owners the financial information and commentary we would wish to receive if our positions were reversed.”

6. Acquistion of Nebraska Furnirue Mart
“We gave Mrs. B a check for $55 million and she gave us her word. That made for an even exchange.”

7. Acquisition of GEICO
“The security I like best”

8. Acquisition of General Reinsurance
“Long ago, Mark Twain said: ‘A man who tries to carry a cat home by its tail will learn a lesson that can be learned in no other way.’ If Twain were around now, he might try winding up a derivatives business. After a few days, he would opt for cats.”

9. The Assessment and Mangement of Risk
“Don’t think, however, that we have lost our appetite for risk. We remain prepared to lose $6 billion in a single event, if we have been paid appropriately for assuming that risk.”

10. Executive Compensation
“At Berkshire... I am a one man compensation committee who determines the salaries for the CEOs of around 40 significant operating businesses. How much time dows this aspect of my job take? Virtually none. How many CEOs have voluntarily left us for other jobs in our 42-year history? Precisely none.”

11. Time Management
“When my mother got to be eighty the most important thing in how long you live is how long your parents live. I got her an exercise bike, put her on a strict diet, and she’s just piling up the years for me.”

12. How to Manage a Crisis
“... I will attempt to do it in the manner of a fellow that has never met a lawyer.”

13. Management Principles and Practices
“Simple, old and few.”

14. Executive Behavior
“Many CEOs attain their positions because they possess an abundance of animal spirits and egos... When such a CEO is encouraged by his advisors to make deals, he responds such as would a teenage boy who is encouraged by his father to have a normal sex life. It’s not a push he needs.”

15. Mistakes I’ve made
“I can look back on every year in terms of mistakes I’ve made. The dumbest mistake I ever made was, will probably be in the future.”

16. Personal Investing
“Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily understandable business whose earnings are virtually certain to be higher five, ten, and fifteen years from now.”

17. Buffett, the Teacher

18. Humor and Stories