754：Can the cult of Berkshire Hathaway outlive W･Buffett?

Can the cult of Berkshire Hathaway outlive Warren Buffett? By Corinne Purtill Centuries from now, historians piecing together the narrative of this stretch of America’s existence will have to explain the curious four-decade (and counting) run in which an arena in an otherwise modest midwestern US city filled to capacity once a year for two aging billionaires talking about the stock market, life, and whatever else tickled their fancy. The annual meeting of the Omaha, Nebraska-based holding company Berkshire Hathaway has no analog in US business or culture. Announcements for the typical corporate annual meeting go straight into most shareholders’ recycling bins. But for Berkshire Hathaway’s, people fly in from Shanghai, Cape Town, and New York City; they drive in from all corners of the US. They bring their babies, their parents, their neighbors, their friends. They are professional asset managers for whom the long weekend is a four-day sprint of deals and networking, and semi-retired Omahans whose grandparents entrusted their money back in the 1960s to a bright young local fund manager named Warren Buffett and as a result made their descendants extremely rich. The formal business of the annual meeting takes less than an hour, but nobody comes all that way to watch Buffett call for approval of last year’s minutes. They come for many reasons, not the least of which is to see Berkshire’s chairman and CEO hold court with vice chairman Charlie Munger on the floor of Omaha’s CenturyLink Center. Fortified by Cherry Coke, boxes of See’s peanut brittle (both Berkshire holdings), and preternatural mental stamina and agility, Buffett and Munger review the year’s performance and then open the floor to questions. Alternating between queries from financial journalists, analysts, and shareholders, the two speak off the cuff for six hours on everything from oil to politics to life advice. Audience members decades younger leave the arena for snacks and bathroom trips; Buffett and Munger never do. (There is, however, a one-hour lunch break.) Buffett is 87. Munger is 94. … https://work.qz.com/1284453/can-the-cult-of-berkshire-hathaway-outlive-warren-buffett/