Buffet

Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930) is a wealthy American investor and businessman. more...

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Nicknamed the "Oracle of Omaha" or the "Sage of Omaha", Buffett has amassed an enormous fortune from astute investments, particularly through his company Berkshire Hathaway, in which he holds a greater than 38% stake. With an estimated current net worth of around $42 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the second-richest person in the world, behind only Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

Despite his immense wealth, Buffett is famous for his unpretentious and frugal lifestyle. He continues to live in the same house in Omaha he bought in 1957 for $31,500. His chairman's salary from Berkshire Hathaway of $100,000 per annum is extremely modest by corporate American standards.

Buffett has stated that most of his fortune will pass to his Buffett Foundation. He is opposed to the transfer of great fortunes from one generation to the next. The bulk of the estate of his wife, valued at $2.6 billion, went to that foundation when she died in 2004.

Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Howard Buffett, a stockbroker and member of Congress, and Leila Buffett. Buffett has two sisters, Doris and Bertie. His grandfather owned a grocery store in Omaha, where Charlie Munger, the current Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway once worked.

Biography

He began working at his father's brokerage at the age of 11, and that same year made his first stock purchase, buying Cities Services preferred shares for $38 each. He sold them when the price reached $40, only to see them rocket to $200 a few years later. This taught him the importance of investing in good companies for the long term. His entrepreneurial spirit was present even as an adolescent. At the age of 14 he spent $1,200 he had saved up from two paper routes to buy 40 acres of farmland which he then rented to tenant farmers.

He attended the University of Nebraska (transferring there from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania), and is a brother of Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity. There he began to fall in love with investing after reading Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor", the so-called bible of value investors, and obtained a Master's degree in economics at Columbia Business School, studying under Benjamin Graham, alongside other budding value investors like Walter Schloss and Irving Kahn. Another influence on Buffett's investment philosophy was the well known investor and writer Philip Fisher.

After receiving the only A+ Benjamin Graham ever handed out to a student in his security analysis class, Buffett wanted to work at Graham-Newman but was turned down. He went to work at his father's brokerage as a salesman. A stock he pushed was GEICO. Buffett picked GEICO after noticing Graham was a director and had a large position in it. Never one to buy a stock on a whim, Buffett visited GEICO's head office on a weekend to investigate further. He knocked until someone opened the door, he was led to the future president of GEICO. Buffett introduced himself as Graham's student and was given a crash course on the insurance business and what gave GEICO an advantage over their competitors. Buffett was exposed to the economics of selling direct, and perhaps more importantly to the benefits of insurance "float", that is the funds which an insurance company holds and is able to invest for its own profit. Over the long term the insurance industry makes minimal profits on underwriting policies, but float can make it a lucrative business to be in, providing the managers are skillful investors. Buffett places great emphasis on this point in his annual shareholders' letters.

Read more at Wikipedia.org