All 838 pages...in about 6 days over the holiday break. If I truly had a handle on the Sage of Omaha's investing techniques, well...This bio, done very much it appears with his cooperation and that of several close to him is a warts and all story of a man consumed by making money but making it with values, and for whom a few bad quarters were, once he had made it nothing to blink at.
While theres is a lot about Buffett the investor and Buffett the man in this heavy tome, one page - 625 to be exact resonated with me - wherein Buffett at one of his biennial meetings chose to revue the 10 most valuable companies in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990...Arrogance, complacency, what Buffett calls the "Instituational Imperative" - the tendency of organizations to copy one another rather than stay ahead, their failure to recognize aggressive shifts in consumer behaviour or their industry. They go on to describe Bill Gates' first visit to a Buffett meeting and awakening several traditional CEOs to the fact that their businesses might soon be "toast"
You would just have loved to be a fly on the wall, or a waiter rolling in a coffee break
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