The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [331]
By year’s end, the shareholders still did not know that Berkshire had purchased more than fourteen million shares of KO at a cost of almost $600 million.27 Because his every action now moved markets, Buffett had gotten special dispensation from the SEC not to disclose his trades for a year. He was buying so much KO stock and the company itself was repurchasing so much that, rather than compete against each other and bid up the price, “they would buy half and Buffett would buy half” of the daily trading volume, according to Walter Schloss.28 Berkshire soon owned more than six percent of the company, worth $1.2 billion.29 In March 1989, when his position was revealed, the resulting hullaballoo caused so much demand that the New York Stock Exchange had to stop trading the stock to keep the price from skyrocketing out of control.
Coca-Cola’s CEO, Roberto Goizueta, had glowed with delight at the famous investor’s endorsement. He asked Buffett to join his board, possibly the most prestigious in North America. Buffett had accepted with alacrity, steeped himself in all things Coca-Cola, and met a number of new people who were fellow board members, including Herbert Allen, the blunt-spoken, straight-shooting chairman of Allen & Co. The two became allies. Allen invited the Buffetts to his Sun Valley conference, which was emerging as the quintessential elephant-bump for corporate CEOs. At Sun Valley, investors, Hollywood, and media moguls met to mingle and play every July.
Buffett knew this meant adding a new annual event to his calendar, but Sun Valley was important and he wanted to attend. Moreover, he now had the means to arrive in style. In keeping with his rising stature as a member of the CEO Club, he had just swapped the used Falcon for a fancy new Challenger jet that cost nearly $7 million. He revealed the airplane—which he had dubbed the Indefensible— in his shareholder letter, making sport of himself with St. Augustine’s prayer: “Help me, oh Lord, to become chaste—but not yet.” He would soon write his shareholders that he wanted to be buried in the jet.
On his way to the airport to fly to Sun Valley, Buffett visited his sister-in-law Dottie in the hospital. Frail, twig-thin, a longtime alcoholic, Susie’s sister had contracted a severe case of Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disorder of unknown origin and sudden onset that can cause almost total paralysis of the nervous system, including the respiratory system and other organs. Dottie was in a coma. She was so debilitated that her doctors recommended discontinuing treatment and letting nature take its course.
Susie, distraught, refused to allow this. She remained in Omaha throughout the summer and fall to nurse Dottie, who underwent a slow and arduous process of extensive care and physical therapy. Since Susie was in Omaha for an extended stay, she had taken an apartment in Dottie’s building, across the hall from her sister. While there, she helped Howie campaign for Douglas County commissioner, an office that governed Omaha and its environs. He was running as a pro-choice Republican, in a race where being Republican helped and being pro-choice didn’t hurt. Buffett had chosen not to back his son financially, once again confounding the perception that a rich man’s son had plenty of cash, so Howie had to raise his own funds. But Susie stuffed envelopes and attended fund-raisers, covering herself with campaign buttons and showing her break-front smile everywhere, in order to put the family imprimatur behind her son. Her presence made everything easier.30 When Howie won the race, Buffett was exceptionally pleased. Farming had never resonated with him; politics made his heart race. He felt that Howie was starting to mature and detected the stirrings of ambition in his son. The Buffetts began to talk of Howie’s running for Howard’s old seat in the second Congressional district.
While Peter