Berkshire is the "Metropolitan Museum of Businesses" · Transcript

WarrenI'd like to hear a little bit more on your philosophies now that Berkshire Hetherway is more and more buying companies on this how you make sure that it's true love and how you pick people. Do they love the business or do they love the money? It's very, very important. I mean, it's crucial because it, well, we see it all the time. I mean, you've got people around who love the money and you see them in public companies and doing things that we will. wouldn't want to have associated with us and on the other hand if they love the business and we taught you know I'll tell an owner this I will say to them you've built this business lovingly for 50 years or you and maybe your parents before you maybe even your grandparents one of these businesses were buying his fourth generation and the clincher I in fact I used it with Jack Ringwald back in 1967 I said to Jack who would build an over long period of says you want to sell this you know you want to dispose of this the most you know your creation your painting Or do you want some 26-year-old trust officer to do it the day after you die? And the thought of who was going to handle this masterpiece, which he'd created himself, was important to him. And I tell them, you know, if they want to put it in our museum, you know, we will make sure, A, it doesn't get resold, that it gets the proper respect, and that you can keep painting it. You know, we won't come in and tell you to use reds instead of yellows or anything like that. So even though it's a masterpiece now, you can keep adding to it. So we like to think that we're the metropolitan. of the museum of businesses and that we can get really outstanding creations to reside in our museum. But we've got to deliver the kind of museum to these painters of businesses, in effect, that we would want if we were doing the same sort of thing. I think our culture is very old-fashioned, in other words. I think it's Ben Franklin. and Andrew Carnegie, and it's very old-fashioned. And what I think is amazing about Berkshire is how well these very old-fashioned ideas still work. Can you imagine Andrew Carnegie calling in a compensation consultant or an investment banker to tell him whether he should buy another steel mill? We don't get imitated much. I mean, we're imitating, you know, the behavior of a period that has been gone for a long. time but I don't seem a lot of the businesses we buy are kind of cranky like us and old fashion and I hope we continue it that way they're sitting out there charlotte yeah yeah yeah