Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett
Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is considered by some to be one of the most successful investors in the world. Buffett is the chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, and is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world's wealthiest person in 2008 and as the third wealthiest in 2015. In 2012 Time named Buffett one of the world's most influential people...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth30 August 1930
CityOmaha, NE
CountryUnited States of America
Despite the lack of precedent, a negative coupon security seemed possible in the present interest rate environment ... I asked Goldman Sachs to create such an instrument and they responded promptly with the innovative security being announced today.
I think it is a marvelous way to keep directors' interests and shareholders interests as closely aligned as possible, with both an upside and a downside component. Too often, people talk about interests being aligned when the directors get the upside and shareholders get the downside.
Would you rather be the world's greatest lover, but have everyone think you're the world's worst lover? Or would you rather be the world's worst lover but have everyone think you're the world's greatest lover? Now, that's an interesting question.
We do not have, nor have had, and never will have an opinion about where the stock market, interest rates, or business activity will be a year from now.
We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet.
We rarely use much debt and, when we do, we attempt to structure it on a long-term fixed rate basis. We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet. This conservatism has penalized our results but it is the only behavior that leaves us comfortable, considering our fiduciary obligations to policyholders, depositors, lenders and the many equity holders who have committed unusually large portions of their net worth to our care.
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.
Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.
Money to some extent sometimes let you be in more interesting environments. But it can't change how many people love you or how healthy you are.
Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.
When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
I've never seen a system as good as Coke has now.
Right now, the rest of the world owns $3 trillion US more of us than we own of them.
Berkshire's board has fully discussed each of the three CEO candidates and has unanimously agreed on the person who should succeed me if a replacement were needed today. The directors know now - and will always know in the future - exactly what they will do when the need arises.