QuestionerThree years ago, you were asked at the meeting about how you thought we should compensate your successor. You said it was a good question, and you would address it in the next annual letter. We've been patiently waiting. Can you tell us now, at least philosophically, how you've been thinking about the way the company should compensate your successor so we don't have to worry when the pay consultants arrive on the scene?
WarrenThere's a couple possibilities, actually. I don't want to get into details on them, but you may have, and I actually would hope that we would have somebody, A, that's already very rich, which they should be, been working a long time, and that kind of ability, that's very rich, and really is not motivated by whether they have 10 times as much money that they and the families can need, or 100 times as much. And they might even wish to perhaps set an example by engaging for something far lower than actually what you could say their true market value is. And that could or could not happen, I think it would be terrific. But I can't blame anybody for wanting their market value. And then if they didn't elect to go in that direction, I would say that you would probably would probably pay them a very modest amount and then have an option, which increased in value by, or increased in striking price annually. Nobody does this hardly. The Washington Graham Holdings has done it. The Washington Post Company did a little bit. But would increase because, assuming that there were substantial retained earnings every year, because why should somebody retain a bunch of earnings and then claim they'd actually improve the value simply because they with health of money from shareholders. So very easy to design that. And in private companies, people do design it that way. They just don't want to do it in public companies because they get more money the other way. But they might have a very substantial one that could be exercised. But where their shareholders, shares had to be held for a couple years after retirement. So that they really got the result over time that the majority of the stockholders would be able to get and not be able to pick their spots as to when they exercised and sold a lot of stock. It's not hard to design. And it really depends who you're dealing with in terms of actually how much they care about money and having money beyond what they can possibly use.