The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [348]
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Buffett and Bill Gates at their first meeting, in July 1991, at the Gates family compound on Washington’s Hood Canal.
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In 1993, Buffett places his hand on a computer mouse for the first time. He was “fearless,” says Sharon Osberg.
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Buffett and “Mr. Coca-Cola” Don Keough sit surrounded by Buffett’s favorite beverage (and Berkshire’s largest stock holding).
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With son Howie and daughter-in-law Devon. They were married in 1982.
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Buffett’s longtime friend Bill Ruane, who died in 2005.
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On Easter Sunday 1993, Bill Gates diverted his plane to Omaha and fooled Melinda French into a surprise meeting with Warren and Astrid at Borsheim’s to choose her engagement ring.
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Warren and Astrid attend the May 1996 wedding of Peter Buffett and Jennifer Heil.
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Buffett takes the wheel of a golf cart in Sun Valley, and Susie and Kay Graham take their lives in their hands.
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Munger and Buffett answer reporters’ questions during the Berkshire Hathaway sharehold meeting weekend.
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Buffett at Sun Valley with friends Diane von Furstenberg, Herbert Allen, and Barry Diller.
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Right to left, Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett on the 1997 panel moderated by Don Keough at which Gates offended Goizueta by paraphrasing Buffett’s view that Coca-Cola was easier to run than a technology company.
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Susie Jr. points out her father’s unobtrusive baseball jersey number—1/16 because stocks were once priced in “teenies”—1/16ths of a dollar.
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Warren and his sisters, Roberta Buffett Bialek (left) and Doris Buffett.
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Totally focused on bridge while playing for the Corporate America bridge team against the U.S. Congress team in 1989.
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With Kay Graham at her home on Martha’s Vineyard.
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Improvising a toast at Bill and Melinda Gates’s wedding reception in 1994.
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While on vacation with the Gateses during the Long-Term Capital Management crisis in 1998, Buffett tries to get satellite phone reception in the Grand Canyon.
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Reunion of the original Graham Group in 1995. From the left: Buffett, Tom Knapp, Munger, Roy Tolles, Sandy Gottesman, Bill Scott, Marshall Weinberg, Walter Schloss, Ed Anderson, Bill Ruane.
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Warren and Susie as Mickey and Minnie Mouse at an ABC-Cap Cities Event, 1997.
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Buffett rides a camel in China during a 1995 trip with Bill and Melinda Gates.
The pyramided nature of the balance sheet of any investment bank was well understood by investors. Salomon was almost uniquely large, bigger than the biggest life insurer, second only to Citicorp in assets. As a major firm, Salomon’s debt desk had always acted as a broker to buy and sell the firm’s own medium-term notes. Suddenly, on Thursday, a long queue of sellers and no buyers appeared. In order to honor the sell orders, the traders had to buy the notes with Salomon’s own cash. Since nobody else wanted to buy the notes, they now amounted to merely pieces of paper that said that Salomon would pay Salomon in the future from Salomon’s own vault. But as the vault emptied, the notes were going to be worthless unless something changed. To conserve cash, the traders began to deter sellers by offering a lower price.51 Sellers quickly figured out what was going on. The line of sellers wanting to sell notes grew longer and longer.
By the end of the day, Salomon’s traders had reluctantly bought $700 million of the firm’s own notes. Then they put up the “closed for business” sign, like a Depression bank snapping shut the teller’s window.52 No other firm would buy Solly’s debt either. And with that, Salomon was teetering precariously close to the edge of bankruptcy.
The next morning, Friday, August 16, the New York Times front page ran a photograph of Gutfreund with the headline “Wall Street Sees a Serious Threat to Salomon Bros.—ILLEGAL BIDDING