QuestionerIt's rare for diverse collections of businesses to be successful. An important part of Berkshire's success has been your skillful oversight of the wholly owned subsidiaries. My question is, what advice would you give to your successor in managing our diverse portfolio of business
WarrenYeah, well, it's a very good point that Charlie and I have been known to rail a bit about companies that go and buy this business and that business, and of course that's exactly what we've done ourselves over the years. I think the motivations have been somewhat different, perhaps, than in many of the cases, and then I think the way we've approached it has been different. We have been reasonably successful, although we've had some notable failures, but we've been reasonably successful in the way we've approached it has been different. in creating a climate where the people who built the businesses continue to run them with the same enthusiasm and energy after they sell to us that they possessed early on. And I think that you can find all kinds of illustrations in the histories of businesses that have diversified. I mean, Gillette bought 20-some businesses. I remember back in the 60s, Coke bought all kinds of businesses, and certainly the cigarette companies. kinds of people, the oil companies for a while were doing it. And generally, the experiences were not very good when they got outside of their own fields. But I think when those companies bought businesses, they really thought they were going to take them over and run them themselves. And Charlie and I are under no illusions that we can run the businesses that we buy as well as, or nearly as well as, the people that have been running them over time. And we don't have group vice presidents that, in all of the people. Omaha, we don't have a whole bunch of directives going out. We don't have companies that were run one way, and then we're going to run them entirely differently and have them reporting in all kinds of special ways to us and have a human relations department and a public relations department and the legal department and all kinds of things in Omaha telling them how to run their businesses. We think that destroys, can destroy many good businesses, certainly can destroy the incentive of the people that have already gotten rich to stay around and make us rich in turn. So I think that has been an important difference. I think it's been demonstrated well enough to all of those around Berkshire that it's been a very good place, generally, I think, for people in terms of how they feel about working there. And I think they recognize it works. So the successor, to me, will come from within Berkshire. They will have seen how it worked. They will believe in it. They will be surrounded by people who have worked in this manner. And I don't think it will be the most difficult job in the world to keep that engine going down the tracks at 90 miles an hour. I mean, it isn't like they have to create the system.