Has Warren Buffett run out of long-run? The stars aligned and Warren Buffett issued an annual shareholder letter that was forced to include an embarrassing charge for significant losses on Berkshire Hathaway’s investment in Kraft Heinz. Buffett’s letter was a rant against GAAP, and a 180 degree turn from his typical long-term focus. I was in New York […]
I wrote about two journalists who penned sympathetic stories about shareholders and other stakeholders who can’t get their voices heard but who, in service to shorter and simpler narratives, paid short shrift to the active and contentious debate about shareholder primacy and shareholder value maximization.
Update: The PCAOB is investigating PwC for its tax avoidance advice to Caterpillar, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. One down, more than 100+ PwC audit clients advised via Luxembourg to go…
Do you want to learn more about those who push for a return to the gold standard? Do you know the common thread between JP Morgan, Madoff’s biggest feeder fund, Chesapeake Energy, and MF Global? Here’s a speech I gave back in May 2012 in New York to the Committee for Monetary Research and Education that touches on both topics.
Big egos making shares move by waving their wands. That makes picking stocks based on fundamental analysis more than slightly anachronistic. A bit about Herbalife…
Like a lot of things Buffett and Berkshire, there’s more to the Swiss Re dispute resolution story than the snappy repartee tells you.
Most initial news accounts of the Facebook S-1 focused on CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Stalinist-like stranglehold on the stock, the strategy, and the board. Tim Carmody of Wired waited a while to file his story, after recording an hour of conversation with me on the phone a few Saturday afternoons ago, and Carmody got lucky. Apple announced some significant to changes in their corporate governance that contrasted sharply with Facebook and Zukerberg’s one-man band approach.
My trusted investor “straw man” reminded me that GM’s current stock price is much lower than the IPO price and far short of the target for a U.S. Treasury breakeven on the investment. That’s an easy story to write.
The next time something goes terribly wrong at a Berkshire Hathaway company, there’s a strong possibility no one will hear about it. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger won’t be held directly responsible either. That’s the beauty of Buffett’s version of a conglomerate corporate structure, decentralized to such an obscene level such that its minimalism is brandished as a feature not a bug.
John Carney, who runs the NetNet Blog at CNBC, wrote a column last week highlighting mine at Forbes.com on Bank of America and Warren Buffet. He picked my comments on PricewaterhouseCoopers, Bank of America’s auditor, to highlight.
Warren Buffett’s investment in Bank of America was big news yesterday and it still reverberating. Forget the “Buffett effect.” I am now enjoying the “front page of Forbes.com” effect. Within an hour of posting it yesterday the story had over 3,000 page views. It is now my number one highest traffic post for my column there.
Ok, so it’s not a quote. And they don’t even mention my name. But indulge me a minute. I’m thrilled to have been linked to by American Lawyer’s Amy Kolz in the AmLawDaily Blog regarding the Berkshire Hathaway investigation of the Sokol affair.
