The first time the name Warren Buffett was brought to my attention was on a Thanksgiving Day hike in Virginia’s bucolic Blue Mountains in the early 1980s.
A scientist friend, who had left the US Navy space labs to create a biotech start-up, said he had decided to buy a handful of shares in Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate for each of his children.
At the time the share price was $400, which, for someone brought up on UK shares, often trading at less than a pound, seemed a wildly extravagant investment.
In time my pal’s $400 shares would rise in value to $2.1million each, and they paid for his children’s education at elite schools, then at top universities, still leaving cash over for deposits on first homes.
The value of buying into the Buffett philosophy of great popular brands, captive markets and strong cashflow was lost on me at the time.
It was an opportunity I foolishly resisted because $400 a share seemed a lot of money. But my appetite had been whetted.
As the stock of Berkshire Hathaway soared and ‘Buffett billionaires’ became a thing (passive investors who had parked their savings there) I decided it would be exciting to attend one of the company’s annual meetings in Nebraska, whose popularity was such they became known as ‘Woodstock for investors’.
Warren Buffett has vowed that 99 per cent of his wealth of $160 billion is destined for charitable foundations
Two decades on from my first, neglected introduction, I began a phone courtship of Buffett’s personal assistant to get an interview with the great man on the fringes of his annual spectacle in Omaha.
It was less an interview, more of a handshake and chat. But the pledge to get together was honoured.
Buffett’s annual public meeting was like no other. It began with a shopping expedition in the suburban mall controlled by Buffett, which included his local furniture franchise, a fancy jewellery store and See’s Candies, all part of his eclectic collection of local investments.
It ended with Buffett throwing the first ball at a local baseball game, before moving on to the teetotaller’s favourite hostelry, Gorat’s Steak House, for a supper of cherry coke and sizzling meat.
My first evening in the Omaha suburbs, having earlier called on Buffett in his unremarkable office downtown, coincided with the Sabbath.
I asked at my hotel whether there happened to be a synagogue nearby. The answer was affirmative and, unusually for the US, it was a short walk away.
Much to my surprise, the synagogue, a stylish building with vaulted windows and vibrant silk curtains, was part of a complex.
It included a sports club with a pool, elegant housing for the elderly and spacious and airy community spaces. How such a lavish campus came to be in the heart of the prairies, close to the cattle yards of Omaha, was a bit of a mystery.
At the evening service I was greeted by the youngish rabbi. He enquired as to where I was from and invited me to a dinner being held that evening for the cheder (Sunday school) parents.
Seated next to him, I asked how it was that here in the Mid-West there were enough resources to build a facility more in keeping with what one might expect to find in Los Angeles or Miami.
He explained that his predecessor, Rabbi Myer Kripke, Warren Buffett and their wives had grown close through playing bridge and lived near each other in the Omaha suburb of Happy Hollow.
Kripke inherited $67,000, mainly from an aunt, and hadn’t a clue to how to invest it. He eventually plucked up the courage to ask Buffett, who he knew had something to do with investment. Buffett told him to write a cheque, and that he would look after it.
By the mid-1990s the Berkshire Hathaway genius had turned the rabbi’s inheritance into $25 million.
Alex Brummer, pictured in the early 1980s, could have bought shares for $400 – they are worth almost $771,000 today
Kripke, who had no real interest in personal wealth, set out on a path of philanthropy. The synagogue and community centre was, his successor explained, his legacy to the ministry he had served.
There was money left over, and Kripke and his wife donated $7 million to the restoration of a crumbling library tower at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where he had studied.
My evening offered a rare insight into how Buffett’s modest living, investment prowess and integrity had done so much good for one slice of American society.
He even insisted on taking questions from all the journalists in the room. How different from the highly rehearsed ‘press huddles’ organised by our current generation of financiers and politicians. Buffett, 94, is to leave his own philanthropic mark. He has vowed that 99 per cent of his wealth of $160 billion is destined for charitable foundations. That is in addition to the $55 billion given to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation fighting disease, such as river blindness, in Africa.
As they say in Yiddish, Buffett is a real mensch – a good person, a man of honour.
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