伯克希尔 · 巴菲特主题问答

1. Over the years, what has Berkshire Hathaway come to mean to you?

Berkshire is my way of teaching those things that mean the most to me and what I want to get out to others.

来源：Source: Student Visit 2007 ；URL: http://buffettspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/01/permanent-value-teachings-of-warren.html ；Time: January 2007

2. How do you manage Berkshire Hathaway?

来源：Source: Buffett Vanderbilt Notes ；URL: ；Time: Jan 2005

3. What do you tell your managers at Berkshire?

I send one message out every year and a half or two years. They get one letter from me every couple of years. And basically it says, run this business like it's the only business that your family can own for the next 100 years. You can't sell it. But every year don't measure it by the earnings in the quarter that year. Measure it by whether the moat around that business, what gives it competitive advantage over time has widened or narrowed. If you keep doing that for 100 years, it's going to work out very well. Then I tell them basically if the reason for doing something is everybody else is doing it, it's not good enough. If you have to use that as a reason, forget it. You don't have a good reason for doing something. Never use that.

来源：Source: Buffett & Gates at Columbia Business School ；URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/33901003 ；Time: November 12th 2009

4. What would Berkshire be like if you hadn't met Charlie Munger?

It would be very different, but I could say the same thing about a lot of other people, too. I've had a lot (at least a dozen) of heroes, including my parents. Charlie and I didn't meet until 1959, although he grew up a half a block from where I lived. Charlie was 35 and I was 29. We've been partners ever since. He is very strong-minded, but we've never had an argument that whole time. I've never been let down once. It must be a terrible feeling to be let down by a hero.

Hang around people who are better than you all the time. You do pick up the behavior of people who are around you. It will make you a better person. Marry upward. That is the person who is going to have the biggest effect on you. A relationship like that over the decades will do nothing but good.

来源：Source: Student Visit 2005 ；URL: http://boards.fool.com/buffettjayhawk-qa-22736469.aspx?sort=whole#22803680 ；Time: May 6, 2005

5. What happens when CEOs call you?

I sit and wait for the phone to ring. I can give most answers in less than a minute. Deals? I like to hear price first. No point hearing the rest if the price isn’t good. Ponzio (terrible name for a business man) pitched the custom frame business in ten minutes. I got the price, liked it and did the deal. Custom frame business can’t be replicated. Met Ponzio later for one hour and never saw him again.

来源：Source: BRK Q&A by John Reuwer ；URL: ；Time: Nov 19th 2009

6. How to evaluate Berkshire or MSFT if it does not pay dividends?

It won’t pay any dividends either. That is a promise I can keep. All you get with Berkshire, you stick it in your safe deposit box and then every year you go down and fondle it. You take it out and then you put it back. There is enormous psychic reward in that. Don’t underestimate it.

The real question is if we can retain dollar bills and turn them into more than a dollar at a decent rate. That is what we try to do. And Charlie Munger and I have all our money in it to do that. That is all we will get paid for doing. We won’t take any options or we won’t take any salaries to speak of. But that is what we are trying to do. It gets harder all the time. The more money we manage the harder it is to do that. We would do way better percentage wise with Berkshire if it was 1/100th the present size. It is run for its owners, but it isn’t run to give them dividends because so far every dollar that we earned or could have paid out, we have turned into more than a dollar. It is worth more than a dollar to keep it. Therefore, it would be silly to pay it out. Even if everyone was tax-free that owned it. It would have been a mistake to pay dividends at Berkshire. Because so far the dollar bills retained have turned into more than a dollar. But there is no guarantee that happens in the future. At some point the game runs out on that. That is what the business is about. Nothing else about the business do we judge ourselves by. We don’t judge it by the size of its home office building or anything the like the number of people working there. We have 12 people working at headquarters and 45,000 employees at Berkshire, 12 people at HQ and 3,500 sq ft. and we won’t change it.

But we will judge ourselves by the performance of the company and that is the only way we will get paid. But believe me, it is a lot harder than it used to be.

来源：Source: Lecture at the University of Florida Business School ；URL: ；Time: October 15th 1998

7. What economic laws have worked best for Berkshire?

It is all a matter of trying to find businesses with wide moats protecting a large castle occupied by an honest lord. Moats might be a natural franchise, brand loyalty, or being a low-cost producer. In a capitalistic society, all moats are subject to attack: if you have a good castle, others will want it. What we want to figure out is what keeps the castle standing and how smart is the lord. [CM:we also like to look for low agency costs on that lord, economies of scale and “economies of intelligence.”]

Buffett elaborated on the “economies of intelligence”: the idea is to find businesses where you have to be smart only once instead of being smart forever. Retailing is a business where you have to be smart forever: your competitors will always copy your innovations. Buying a network TV station in the early days of television required you to be smart only once. In that kind of business, a terrible manager can still make a fortune. Given the choice between the two (a business where you have to be smart forever or one where you have to be smart once), Buffett advised, pick the great business - be smart once.

来源：Source: BRK Meeting 1995 ；URL: ；Time: 1995

8. How do you stop Berkshire subsidiaries hoarding capital?

Berkshire wants the capital in the most logical place. Berkshire is a tax efficient way to move money from business to business, and we can redeploy capital in places that need them. Most of the managers of companies we own are already independently rich. They want to work, but don't have to. They don't horde capital they don't need.