'Independent' board directors aren't really independent · Transcript · BuffettMungerGPT

WarrenPeople go on museum boards, you know, and they're expected to contribute. People go on college boards, and they're expected to contribute money. And they say it's a great honor to be on a university board or museum board or whatever. It's a great honor, and therefore you should raise money for us. Well, frankly, I think our board's more interesting than being on a university board or a hospital board or something. I wouldn't know what they were talking about in any way on museum board or art board. And so, in, but people have found that they can make $300,000 a year, you know, which is way more, which is enormously important to some people and is meaningless to others. And chances are if somehow they had arranged it so that directors didn't get paid at all, there'd be plenty of people who wanted to be directors. be a prestigious sort of thing and all that, but, but in effect, it's money that comes very easily. I did, the whole idea of the independent director, frankly, is, it just doesn't really make any sense. You don't think a director is independent who needs $300,000 a year? He needs the money, yeah. I mean. He's independent the way a slave is independent.