Getting the Friday File out a bit early for you today, since I’ve got a family commitment… but don’t worry, if I missed anything dramatic last night or today, we’ll catch up with it soon enough.
So… what’s rattling around in my investing brain this week?
Uncle Warren is getting old… but still going strong and making big moves (selling, this time)The world’s most closely-watched nonagenarian regaled us all with his wisdom again on Saturday, and I was sad not to be there in person at the Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) Annual Meeting… but happy that remote viewing of the event has gotten dramatically better over the years. What stood out about the event?
Well, I’ve noted in the past that Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger had started to appear more frail in the past few years, before Charlie passed away late last year, certainly understandable as they sit in front of tens of thousands of investors and answer questions for hours at a time… but my impression was that this was the first year that Warren really talked about feeling older, really accepted that the top of his hourglass is running low on sand, and he can’t easily do the things he took for granted ten or twenty years ago. It seemed like Charlie’s passing must have had a big impact in how Warren is thinking about succession and the operation of the company, because he specifically noted that he can’t read as fast as he used to, and doesn’t get all the management calls from subsidiaries any more, it now feels like the passing of the torch to CEO-in-waiting Greg Abel is more real. Warren still clearly loves his work, he doesn’t seem to ever want to do anything other than read newspapers and 10-Ks, and he probably won’t retire, but he seems more at peace now with the idea that his time at the CEO desk might be very short.
That caused him to be a little more specific with some of the succession questions, too — now that Charlie’s passing makes this more than a hypothetical exercise, and Greg Abel has been prominent in his leadership role for a couple years, Warren more clearly endorsed the idea that Abel should be trusted to do essentially what Warren has done for 50 years — oversee not just the operating businesses, but also be the final voice for ...