The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [4]
Buffett, as always, gave the photographers a willing wave and a grandfatherly smile as he walked by. They captured him on film, then began peering at the next car.
The Buffetts drove around to their French-country-style condominium, one of the coveted Wildflower group next to the pool and tennis courts, where Herbert Allen housed his VIPs. Inside, the usual loot awaited them: a pile of Allen & Co. SV99 logo jackets, baseball caps, zip fleeces, polo shirts—every year a different color—and a zippered notebook. Despite his fortune of more than $30 billion—enough to buy a thousand of those G-IVs parked out at the airport—Buffett liked few things more than getting a free golf shirt from a friend. He took the time to look carefully through this year’s swag. Of even more interest to him, however, was the personal note that Herbert Allen sent to each guest—and the perfectly organized conference notebook that explained what Sun Valley had in store for him this year.
Timed to the second, organized to the hilt, crisp as Herbert Allen’s French cuffs, Buffett’s schedule was laid out hour by hour, day by day. The notebook spelled out the conference speakers and topics—until now a closely guarded secret—and the luncheons and dinners that he would attend. Unlike the other guests, Buffett knew much of this in advance, but he still wanted to see what the notebook had to say.
Herbert Allen, the so-called “Lord of Sun Valley” and the conference’s quiet choreographer, set the tone of casual luxury that pervaded the event. People always cited him for high principles, brilliance, good advice, and generosity. “You’d like to die with the respect of somebody like Herbert Allen,” a guest gushed. Afraid of being disinvited to the conference, those who voiced any criticism rarely went beyond vague hints that Herbert was “unusual,” restless, impatient, and possessed of an oversize personality. Standing in the shadow of his tall, wiry frame, one had to strain to keep up with the words that crackled forth like machine-gun fire. He barked questions, then cut off respondents mid-sentence, lest they waste a second of his time. He specialized in saying the unsayable. “Ultimately Wall Street will be eliminated,” he once told a reporter, although he ran a Wall Street bank. He referred to his competitors as “hot-dog vendors.”4
Allen kept his firm small, and his bankers staked their own money on their deals. This unconventional approach made the firm a partner rather than a mere servant to its clients, who were the elite of Hollywood and the media world. Thus, when he played host, his guests felt privileged, rather than like captives pitched by salesmen at every turn. Allen & Co. arranged a detailed social agenda every year built around each guest’s personal network of relationships—which the firm understood—and the new people that Allen’s majordomos felt each should meet. Unspoken hierarchies dictated the distances of the guests’ condominiums from the Inn (where meetings were held), which meals the guests were invited to attend, and with whom they would be seated.
Buffett’s friend Tom Murphy referred to this kind of event as “elephant-bumping.” “Anytime a bunch of big shots get together,” says Buffett, “you can get people to come, because it reassures them if they’re at an elephant-bumping that they’re an elephant too.”5
Sun Valley was always very reassuring, because unlike most elephant bumps, one could not buy one’s way in. The result was a sort of faux democracy of the elite. Part of the thrill of coming was to see