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3 NEWS: Warren Buffett leads annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting

2013-05-09T15:21:00.000+12:00

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:14p.m.

Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett.

Part rock concert, part investment workshop, the annual gathering of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders is an odd mix.

But that's just how the faithful crowd of more than 30,000 who attended Saturday's version likes it.

Getting the chance to learn about business and life from Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett and spend the day with like-minded investors made it worthwhile to brave Saturday's cool, rainy weather in Omaha, Nebraska.

The level of appreciation shareholders have for Buffett becomes clear as he tours the meeting's 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall each year.

Admirers held their cell phones and iPads in the air as they surrounded the billionaire Saturday morning. A pack of security guards created a buffer around Buffett as he visited displays selling Berkshire's See's Candy, explained BNSF railroad's virtues and highlighted some of the company's other 80-plus subsidiaries.

Josh Miller, 11, of Maple Grove, Minn., couldn't see over the throng of people, reporters and cameras that moved through the exhibition floor crowd. But he knew who was at the center.

"Warren! Warren!" he called, holding up his iPad to get a shot of the Oracle of Omaha.

At the See's booth, Buffett got a lesson in making hand-dipped bonbons. Then See's manufacturing manager Steve Powell got Buffett to autograph his white uniform coat.

The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting began humbly in 1982 with a crowd of 15 in an insurance company cafeteria. It has been growing steadily just as the company's stock price rose to become the most-expensive in the U.S., reaching $162,904 for a Class A share on Friday.

Now the meeting regularly fills Omaha's 18,300-seat arena and every nearby overflow room. Buffett likes to call it "Woodstock for Capitalists."

It's the one day of the year when the 82-year-old Buffett gets treated like a rock star while his friend Bill Gates, who serves on Berkshire's board, can wander through the crowd without much recognition.

Shareholder Larry Cundiff has seen a lot of change at the meetings since he started attending about 15 years ago. He said it's hard to get within 15 feet of Buffett now.

"I met him once at a meeting in - I think - 1997," Cundiff said. "I was sitting at a booth, and he just walked up and sat beside us in the next booth. He autographed a dollar bill for me. I don't think he even had security then."

Buffett again shared the stage this year with his 89-year-old business partner, Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, to answer questions from shareholders, journalists and financial analysts for six hours.

The questions seemed somewhat tougher and more detailed because of the addition of a panel of investment professionals, including Doug Kass, who has a negative view on Berkshire's stock.

But the bulk of the questions explored familiar themes, such as the future of Berkshire after Buffett and Munger are gone. The questioners also wanted to hear what the two men thought about the economy, the Federal Reserve and life in general.

Buffett said he thinks Berkshire will continue to thrive after he's gone because the company's employees and managers will resist any attempt to change the way it runs.

"The key is preserving the culture, and having a successor as CEO who is smart and energetic," Buffett said.

The U.S. economy should continue growing at a steady pace just as it has since the fall of 2009, Buffett said, but the Federal Reserve's efforts to stimulate growth are likely to eventually create inflation.

"We've encountered far worse problems than we face now," Buffett said. "This is not our toughest hour."

Not everyone at the meeting was applauding Buffett. Outside, dozens of Utah coal miners picketed in the hopes of winning a better contract offer. A handful of environmental activists left disappointed after shareholders rejected a proposal to require Berkshire's utilities to adopt goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Bernie Morris, of Price, Utah, stood in the rain to hand out flyers Saturday morning. The 67-year-old said he's worked for the Deer Creek coal mine for 28 years, but fears he won't be able to afford the monthly health insurance premium the company wants to charge.

A spokeswoman for the mine, which is owned by a subsidiary of Berkshire's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., said the company is committed to a fair solution but won't comment on specific proposals.

But the protesters didn't deter the thousands of people who came to hear Buffett and Munger.

Amaury Fernandez and his best friend Rick Cabrera said they had travelled to the meeting from Miami because Fernandez is interested in investing.

"They are two of the most remarkable men I've ever learned about," Fernandez said. "We don't know how much longer these gentlemen are going to be alive."

Jim Weber, CEO of Berkshire's Brooks Running company, said he has been reading Buffett's annual letters to shareholders since the 1980s - long before Brooks became part of Berkshire. Weber had even attended four Berkshire annual meetings before Brooks was acquired in 2006 along with Russell Athletic.

"If you're in the business world, it's a bucket list item. There's no other annual meeting like it," Weber said.

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Read the full transcript of the October 24 2012 Squawk Box Interview with Warren Buffett
Download the 2010 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report
Download the 1977 - 2011 Warren Buffett Letter's to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders

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FORBES: The Worst Investment Of Warren Buffett's Career

2013-05-09T15:04:00.000+12:00

5/08/2013 @ 12:57PM |

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Warren Buffett is a hero to many investors, myself included. His record speaks for itself: 18.3% annualized returns in Berkshire Hathaway’s book value over the past 30 years compared to just 10.8% for the S&P 500. And his returns in the 1950s and 1960s, when he was running a much smaller hedge fund, were even better.

Mr. Buffett is also quite generous with his investment wisdom, sharing it freely with anyone who cares to listen. But as with most things in life, failure is a better teacher than success. And Mr. Buffett has had his share of multi-billion-dollar failures.

You want to know the biggest mistake of Buffett’s career?

By his own admission, it was buying Berkshire Hathaway!

Everyone assumes that Buffett’s decision to buyBerkshire Hathaway was a typical Buffett stroke of genius. Nothing could be further from the truth. (See Buffett’s video interview with CNBC here.)

We like to think of Warren Buffett as the wise, elder statesman of the investment profession, but Buffett too was young once and prone to the rash behavior of youth. And Berkshire Hathaway was not always a financial powerhouse; it was once a struggling textile mill.

Buffett had noticed a trading pattern in Berkshire’s stock; when the company would sell off an underperforming mill, it would use the proceeds to buy back stock, which would temporarily boost the stock price. Buffett’s strategy was to buy Berkshire stock each time it sold a mill and then sell the company its stock back in the share repurchase for a small, tidy profit.

But then ego got in the way. Buffett and Berkshire’s CEO had a gentleman’s agreement on a tender offer price. But when the office offer arrived in the mail, Buffett noticed that the CEO’s offer price was 1/8 of a point lower than they had agreed previously.

Taking the offer as a personal insult, Buffett bought a controlling interest in the company so that he could have the pleasure of firing its CEO. And though it might have given him satisfaction at the time, Buffett later called the move a “200-billion-dollar mistake.”

Why? Because Buffett wasted precious time and capital on a textile mill in terminal decline rather than allocate his funds in something more profitable—in his case, insurance.

By Buffett’s estimates, had he never invested a penny in Berkshire Hathaway and had instead used his funds to buy, say, Geico, his returns over the course of his career would have been doubled. Berkshire will still go down in history as one of the greatest investment success stories in history, of course. But it was a terrible investment and a major distraction that cost Buffett dearly in terms of opportunity cost.

What lessons can we learn from this? I’ll leave you with two quotes from Buffett himself:

“If you get into a lousy business, get out of it.”

“If you want to be known as a good manager, buy a good business.”

In trader lingo, cut your losers and let your winners ride. Holding on to a bad investment wastes good capital and mental energies that would be better put to use elsewhere.

Thank you, Mr. Buffett, for sharing your failures with us. Your willingness to do so is one of the reasons we love you.

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Warren Buffett Video of Meeting (4-6 May 2013)

2013-05-08T21:47:00.002+12:00

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HUFFINGTON POST: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Worst Among S&P 100 Companies At Promoting Diversity: Survey

2013-05-08T16:18:00.000+12:00

The Huffington Post | By Jillian Berman Posted: 05/06/2013 9:43 am EDT | Updated: 05/07/2013 12:14 pm EDT

Warren Buffett reminded all of us last week that Corporate America could do more to advance women in the workplace. Perhaps he should start with his own company.

Berkshire Hathaway, where Buffett is chairman and CEO, ranked dead last among S&P 100 companies in boosting women and minorities, according to a March survey of corporate diversity from Calvert Investments. Calvert ranked companies’ commitment to diversity based on 10 criteria including board representation, highest-paid executives and family-friendly benefits.

Out of a possible 100 points, Berkshire scored a five. For comparison’s sake, Citigroup and Coca-Cola scored a 100 and a 95 respectively. Berkshire Hathaway didn’t immediately respond to an email message from The Huffington Post seeking comment.

Despite his company’s low ranking on the list, Buffett made a case last week for more women in the corporate world. In an essay in Fortune titled “Warren Buffett is Bullish on Women,” the Oracle of Omaha lent his voice to the recent chorus of people arguing that American businesses and working women themselves could do more to boost women in the workplace.

“Fellow males, get onboard,” Buffett wrote. “The closer that America comes to fully employing the talents of all its citizens, the greater its output of goods and services will be.”

Berkshire also appointed the third woman to its company board earlier this year, a feat that only 13 percent of companies have achieved, according to a recent survey from GMI ratings. More than 60 percent of companies have at least one woman on their board, according to GMI.

Still, as the Calvert report notes, Corporate America has a long way to go before becoming truly diverse. More than half of the companies surveyed had no women or minorities in their highest-paid positions.

And when it comes to the top job things are even worse: Only 4 percent of the S&P 500 CEOs are women andjust 6 CEOs -- or slightly more than 1 percent -- were a racial minority in 2012.

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FORTUNE: Watch Fortune's Q&A with Warren Buffett

2013-05-08T16:10:00.000+12:00

Warren Buffett sits down with Fortune Magazine's Pattie Sellers to discuss the changing landscape for women in business. 7/5/2013 51:31 MINUTES

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USA TODAY: Warren Buffett: Buy stocks, beware bonds

2013-05-08T15:23:00.000+12:00

11:12 a.m. EDT May 6, 2013

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says he doesn't like owning bonds right now, and he doesn't think average investors should either.

The CEO and chairman of investment conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway says individual investors should keep enough cash on hand to be comfortable if the unexpected happens.

The rest should be invested in stocks, he added, even though stock prices are well above the rock-bottom levels they hit several years ago during the Great Recession.

Buffett said on CNBC financial news network Monday that bonds are a "terrible" investment at the moment and that owners of long-term bonds may see big losses when interest rates eventually rise.

The famed investor, dubbed the Oracle of Omaha for his long-term winning track record, said stocks are generally selling for reasonable prices even at the record high levels of the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

The 82-year-old Buffett, who says he has no plans to retire anytime soon, believes the Federal Reserve's efforts to keep rates low are helping stocks. But an improving economy is also playing a role.

VIEWS: Buffett says women are key to economic prosperity

He said he remains a fan of Fed chair Ben Bernanke, but Buffett also said he thinks bond prices are artificially inflated because of the Fed's ongoing stimulus, which includes keeping rates low and buying $85 billion of bonds a month. Bond yields, which move inversely to prices, are near historic lows.

Buffett gave interviews Monday to CNBC and Fox Business News networks following a star-studded weekend of events surrounding Berkshire's annual shareholders meeting.

GALLERY: Investors flock to Omaha to hear Warren Buffett

Berkshire owns more than 80 companies and holds major investments in Wells Fargo, IBM, Coca-Cola and other companies with iconic brands.

Buffett reiterated his support of Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase. He said the bank, whose stock he owns in his personal portfolio, has the right person at the helm.

He expects Berkshire to own a stake in ketchup-maker H.J. Heinz forever, and Buffett said he doesn't see a problem in taking a partner — the Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital — in a recently announced $23.3 billion deal. He added that he hopes Berkshire's stake in Heinz will grow over time.

He has been questioned about whether the structuring of the Heinz deal, which gives Berkshire a 50% stake in Heinz, represents a change in the company's investment style. Typically, Berkshire buys companies outright and allows them to operate without significant intervention.

TWITTER: Warren Buffett tweets he's 'in the house'

But 3G is not a typical private equity firm, Buffett said, because it invests a significant amount of its own money in deals and it runs businesses.

Buffett said traffic is picking up at BNSF railroad, which Berkshire owns, as the economy improves. He said the railroad will likely deliver record earnings this year, but will probably still haul fewer carloads than it did before the recession.

BNSF "has been a terrific acquisition for Berkshire," Buffett said.

BNSF contributed $798 million to Berkshire's $4.9 billion first-quarter profit the company reported Friday. The Omaha-based company's overall profit soared 51%over the previous year's $3.3 billion net income.

Contributing: USA TODAY's Beth Belton, The Associated Press

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FORTUNE: Warren Buffett's Office Hours

2013-05-08T15:17:00.000+12:00

5/07/2013 @ 7:02PM

Warren Buffett (Photo courtesy of Levo League)

On Tuesday afternoon Warren Buffett sat down with Levo League, a “community of professional women seeking advice, inspiration, and the tools needed to succeed,” and fielded live questions from across the internet about everything from women in the workplace to his personal heroes. From his office in Omaha, America’s second richest man not only dispensed a bounty of practical career advice, but also outlined the personal philosophy that keeps him motivated and has inspired his advocacy of gender equality.

During the second half of the hour long video chat Buffett responded to more than a dozen questions, posed by thousands of online mentees. He encouraged them to “hang around with people who are better than you are,” refine their communication skills, not to be afraid of failure and to “never give up searching for the job you’re passionate about.”

But Buffett began Tuesday’s discussion by deconstructing the absurdity that is gender discrimination. He first noticed the phenomenon as a boy, when his sisters Doris and Bertie, described by Buffett as “as smart as I am, probably a little smarter, and much more personable,” were encouraged to marry well, while he was told repeatedly that the sky was his professional limit. Later, at Columbia University, there was only one woman in Buffett’s MBA class. In his words, “it was a joke.”

By popular moral standards, this sort of discrimination would be considered objectively wrong, on the grounds that it is unfair. But Buffett’s objection runs much deeper than that. In his view, bias of any kind is “just plain foolish” on an economic level.

Because top flight talent is such a precious commodity in a competitive environment, business owners and hiring managers “have to take it wherever [they] can get it.” To allow irrational biases to influence business decisions of any kind is ultimately costly to ownership, as the practice is economically inefficient. For if an organization does not hire the best talent due to institutional discrimination, the outfit will soon find itself at a competitive disadvantage to firms that base their personnel decisions exclusively on merit.

In addition to his economic argument against discrimination, Buffett touched on an interesting ethical one. In his talk with Levo League, Buffett summed up his message with the following maxim: “everybody should get a chance to live up to their potential.” Discrimination, of course, can be a powerful obstacle for any individual confronted with it in their quest to realize their personal potential.

It is through the realization of one’s potential that one identifies and gains the ability to do what makes them happy. For Buffett, what makes him happy is running Berkshire Hathaway and pursuing investment ideas. Reminiscent of the Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia, he views his happiness not as a fixed status he has seized, but as a perpetual and boundless activity. This view is what ultimately keeps him motivated and hard at work, despite his massive fortune. In Buffett’s words, “I am painting this painting that is Berkshire Hathaway; the canvas is an unlimited size.”

Because Buffett was allowed to realize his potential as perhaps the greatest investor of all time, achieving excellence in the discipline he is passionate about, he appears to have attained a rare kind of productive contentment. His argument is simply that all women should have equal opportunity to do the same. And ultimately, by realizing the potential of the entire human population, we will all be better off. As far as Buffett sees it, “the future is terrific.”

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USA TODAY: Warren Buffett's Berkshire sells 1.4M Moody's shares

2013-05-08T15:11:00.001+12:00

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Berkshire Hathaway has sold nearly 1.4 million more Moody's shares, so it has unloaded more than 3 million shares of the credit ratings agency this month.

But Warren Buffett's company still controls 11% of Moody's because it continued to hold 25.3 million shares after the sales.

Berkshire reported the latest transactions that happened between Thursday and Monday to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

Berkshire used to own 48 million Moody's shares in March 2009 before it started selling the stock.

Berkshire generated roughly $84.5 million from the latest stock sales because it sold the shares at prices between $60 and $62.78 per share.

Berkshire reported selling 1.7 million Moody's shares last week.

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FORTUNE: Warren Buffett joins Twitter

2013-05-03T07:58:00.002+12:00

The 82-year old Berkshire Hathaway CEO tweeted for the first time Thursday morning during a discussion about women in leadership positions.

By Colleen Leahey, reporter

FORTUNE -- Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett may have his hands in over 70 companies, but there's one frontier he has yet to traverse: Twitter. The Omaha, Nebraska-based investing guru, who doesn't have a computer in his office, joined the social media world this morning during a conversation about women and work with Fortune senior editor-at-largePattie Sellers. The first 140-character message Buffett shared with the Twittersphere? "Warren is in the house."

Two days before Berkshire's (BRKA) annual meeting, Buffett engaged in a live-streamed video chat, answering questions cultivated on Twitter with the hashtag #FortuneBuffett. The discussion follows an essay written by Buffett about the dearth of women in senior leadership roles, published exclusively in Fortune on Thursday morning. The ethical case for promoting more women is obvious, Buffett argues, but there is also a bottom-line argument. "Fellow males, get onboard," he writes. "The closer that America comes to fully employing the talents of all its citizens, the greater its output of goods and services will be."

"This is the first social interview that Warren has ever done," said Sellers introducing the talk. Buffett said he'd read the galleys of Sheryl Sandberg's recent book, Lean In, and had wanted to get his thoughts on women and work out.

Asked about his definition of success, Buffett said it was not defined by money but by "being loved by the people you love." Buffett went on to say the advancement of women in the workplace is a source of optimism for him vis-a-vis the future of the American economy. "Any country that is only using half of its talent," he said, "has a great future using 100% of its talent." He added, "just think about what you can do when you get the whole team out there."

Sellers asked why it was only in 2003 that Buffett recruited a woman outside his family to Berkshire's board. "I don't have a good answer to that," Buffett said laughing. "I treated it as my own province, I didn't consult the board all the time. I've gotten a lot better since then."

Buffett said is female role models include his first wife, Fortune's own Carol Loomis, and former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.

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WASHINGTON POST: Heinz shareholders will vote on $23.3B sale to Buffett’s company, 3G Capital on April 30

2013-03-30T10:17:00.000+13:00

By Associated Press, Published: March 28

PITTSBURGH — Shareholders of H.J. Heinz Co. will vote on April 30 whether to sell the ketchup maker to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital for $23.3 billion.

Heinz also said Wednesday that antitrust regulators approved the deal early, clearing one of the conditions to completing the transaction.

Heinz shareholders will receive $72.50 in cash for each share they own if the deal is approved.

Based on Pittsburgh-based Heinz’s number of shares outstanding, the deal is worth $23.3 billion. Including debt, the deal is worth about $28 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc., based in Omaha, Neb., is putting up $12.12 billion in return for half of the equity in Heinz, as well as $8 billion of preferred shares that pay 9 percent. Brazil’s 3G Capital will run Heinz.

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BLOOMBERG: Swiss Re Settles Contract Dispute With Berkshire Hathaway

2013-03-30T10:12:00.000+13:00

Carolyn Bandel - Mar 28, 2013 9:58 PM GMT+1300

Swiss Re Ltd. (SREN), the world’s second- biggest reinsurer, expects to post a first-quarter gain of about $100 million after settling a dispute over a so-called retrocession deal with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A)

Swiss Re will take back some of the risks covered by the closed block of U.S. life reinsurance and in return will receive a payment of $610 million from Berkshire Hathaway, the Zurich- based company said today in an e-mailed statement.

Enlarge image

The Swiss Re building, also known as the "Gherkin", center, stands alongside buildings in the city of London. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Berkshire Hathaway will reduce the reinsurance protection it provides to Swiss Re for the retrocession deal to $1.05 billion from the $1.5 billion the Omaha, Nebraska-based company agreed to take on in January 2010. Berkshire Hathaway had alleged damages of between $500 million and $1 billion after the contract resulted in a 2011 pretax underwriting loss of $642 million as assumptions about mortality rates were exceeded.

“The settlement of the dispute with Berkshire Hathaway and the advantageous outcome for Swiss Re” are positive, said Georg Marti, a Zurich-based analyst with Zuercher Kantonalbank who has a market weight rating on the stock.

Swiss Re rose as much as 0.7 percent in Zurich trading and was up 0.5 percent to 77.60 Swiss francs at 9:26 a.m., valuing the company at 28.8 billion francs ($30.2 billion). The stock has gained 18 percent this year.

Producing Losses

“Prior to recapture, the treaties have been producing losses,” Swiss Re said in the statement. “There is no assurance that the payments received from Berkshire Hathaway will be sufficient to cover future losses.”

The retrocession contract was one of a number of deals between Swiss Re and Berkshire Hathaway over the past five years. Buffett’s firm injected 3 billion francs of capital into Swiss Re in February 2009 after record losses at the reinsurer. Swiss Re repaid the funds in November 2010.

Berkshire Hathaway also bought about 3 percent of Swiss Re in 2008, when it signed a quota share agreement that gave the U.S. firm 20 percent of the reinsurer’s new or renewed property and casualty business. That contract ended in December.

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NASDAQ: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Keeps Buying NOV

2013-03-29T22:41:00.000+13:00

\By GuruFocus, March 28, 2013, 07:25:03 PM EDT

Ranked 184th on this year's Fortune 500 list of America's largest companies, National Oilwell Varco, Inc. ( NOV ) also ranks on Warren Buffett 's keeps-buying list as one of the stocks with the highest average 10-year EBITDA growth rate of 28.4%. With a portfolio weighting of 0.48% as of Dec. 31, 2012, Berkshire Hathaway lists 5,294,800 NOV shares, valued around $361.8 million, but a fraction of the portfolio. The current NOV share price is $70.60, with a change from average down 2%. Last year on this day, stock was $78.21.

Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK.A ) ( BRK.B ) last added to its NOV position by 26.46%, quarter ending Dec. 31, 2012. In that same quarter, Gurus John Burbank, Chuck Royce and Bruce Kovner sold out. Other Gurus buying or adding to their NOV position that same quarter are: T. Boone Pickens, David Rolfe, Jim Simons, Robert Olstein, Paul Tudor Jones and John Rogers.

Competing with other Fortune 500s, Halliburton, 118th on the list, and Baker Hughes, 141st on the list, and others in the oil and gas equipment services arena, Houston-based National Oilwell Varco, Inc., is a giant among providers of oil and gas drilling equipment and components. The company has operations in over 900 locations across six continents.

The company has a market cap of $30.23 billion. The P/E ratio is 12.2, and the P/S ratio is 1.5063. National Oilwell Varco ( NOV ) 12-month growth rate is 36.1%, annual rate per share.

Here's Warren Buffett's NOV holding history:

Last month National Oilwell Varco, Inc. completed its $2.5 billion all-cash acquisition of Robbins & Myers, Inc., a supplier of application-critical equipment and systems in global energy, chemical and other industrial markets. According to Rigzone, the combination of the two companies' manufacturing infrastructure and technology portfolio would allow NOV to further advance its presence in oil and gas markets. Pete Miller, Chairman, President and CEO of National Oilwell Varco, stated, "Robbins & Myers has many complementary products with those National Oilwell Varco currently offers the industry...I am particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of incorporating their downhole tools, pumps and valves into National Oilwell Varco Petroleum Services & Supplies and Distribution & Transmission segments."

Here's a detailed financial history of NOV performance.

For Warren Buffett's top buys, top sales, and top holdings, take a look:

Here is the complete portfolio of Warren Buffett.

Also check out:

1. Warren Buffett's Undervalued Stocks
2. Warren Buffett's Top Growth Companies
3. Warren Buffett's High Yield stocks
4. Stocks that Warren Buffett keeps buyingAbout GuruFocus: GuruFocus.com tracks the stocks picks and portfolio holdings of the world's best investors. This value investing site offers stock screeners and valuation tools. And publishes daily articles tracking the latest moves of the world's best investors. GuruFocus also provides promising stock ideas in 3 monthly newsletters sent to Premium Members .

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.

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Warren Buffett was working as an investment salesman in Omaha.

2013-03-29T00:00:00.001+13:00

BloombergTV

In his early 20s, Buffett worked as an investment salesman for Buffett-Falk & Co. in Omaha before moving to New York to be a securities analyst at age 26. During that year, he started Buffett Partnership, Ltd., an investment partnership in Omaha.

New York just wasn’t for him, Buffett told NBC. “In some places it’s easy to lose perspective. But I think it’s very easy to keep perspective in a place like Omaha.”

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FOX BUSINESS: Goldman Sachs Massages '08 Warrant Deal With Warren Buffett

2013-03-28T23:53:00.001+13:00

By Matt Egan

Published March 26, 2013

FOXBusines

Warren Buffett said he plans to hold a “significant investment” in Goldman Sachs (GS) after the Wall Street investment bank amended terms of crisis-era warrants awarded to the billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A).

Goldman shareholders cheered the news, bidding the financial giant’s shares more than 1% higher in premarket trading.

“We are pleased that Berkshire Hathaway intends to remain a long-term investor in Goldman Sachs,” Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s CEO, said in a statement.

Goldman, which received a crucial $5 billion investment from Buffett during the financial crisis, said it has amended its warrant agreement with Berkshire from cash settlement to net share settlement.

Under terms of the original agreement, Berkshire had the right to acquire 43,478,260 shares of Goldman’s common stock at an exercise price of $115 at any time until October 1.

Goldman’s shares closed at $146.11 on Monday, meaning Berkshire conceivably could have sold its approximately $5 billion of new shares for about $6.35 billion on the open market.

However, Goldman said it will now deliver to Berkshire the number of shares of common stock equal in value to the difference between the average closing price over the 10 trading days preceding October 1, 2013, and an exercise price of $115 multiplied by the number of shares of common stock covered by the warrant (43,478,260).

“We intend to hold a significant investment in Goldman Sachs, a firm that I did my first transaction with more than 50 years ago," said Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire. "I have been privileged to have known and admired Goldman's executive leadership team since my first meeting with Sidney Weinberg in 1940."

Shares of New York-based Goldman gained 1.3% to $147.97 in premarket trading on Tuesday, putting them on track to extend their 2013 rally of 14.5%.

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THE INDEPENDANT: Wall Street critic Warren Buffett gets 2% of Goldman Sachs

2013-03-28T23:45:00.000+13:00

Warren Buffett, the American investor who in the past has criticised the casino culture that pervades Wall Street, is set to become one of the leading shareholders in Goldman Sachs, the investment bank he backed by taking a stake during the financial crisis. And he won't even have to spend a penny of his own money.

Back in 2008, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate invested billions of dollars in Goldman and in return received warrants allowing it to buy around 9 per cent of the bank for $115 per share by October 2013.

Yesterday, however, Goldman said Berkshire had instead agreed to exchange its potential profit on the warrants for the bank's stock, meaning that it wouldn't have to dip into its cash reserves to become a sizable shareholder with around 2 per cent of Goldman. That would make it – and Mr Buffett – the bank's ninth largest shareholder. "We intend to hold a significant investment in Goldman Sachs," Mr Buffett said yesterday.

The investment adds Goldman to a share portfolio that, despite Mr Buffett's often vocal calls for a realigning of what he once called "unbalanced incentives" on Wall Street, already includes Wells Fargo, Bank of America and the smaller though still sizable M&T Bank.

Recently he has gone on record to defend institutions that he believes have attempted to roll back the excesses and, in the years since the crisis, sought to build up their capital buffers. "The banks will not get this country in trouble, I guarantee it," he told the Bloomberg financial news service earlier this year. "The capital ratios are huge, the excesses on the asset side have been largely cleared out." He added: "Our banking system is in the best shape in recent memory."

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