The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [434]
While Buffett was working out logistics with General Re, the South Tower, burning from inside, collapsed, as did a portion of the Pentagon. Within minutes, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Over the next half hour, government buildings were evacuated, and the North Tower collapsed. The New York Stock Exchange closed and civilians fled the clouds of smoke and debris in lower Manhattan.
Almost everyone in Omaha at the golf tournament was affected in some way or another, however remotely. Many had friends, relatives, neighbors, or business acquaintances who worked in the towers. The tournament staff took care of their needs and helped them with logistics. One, Ann Tatlock, the CEO of Fiduciary Trust, which was headquartered in the Trade Center, spent the rest of the day in her hotel room, making phone calls.7 About a hundred Fiduciary Trust employees would prove to be missing. Berkshire, of course, had employees in businesses scattered all across the country. In the end Buffett would find that Berkshire had lost no employees—only money.
Some people decided to leave the golf tournament immediately, but with all airports closed this was not easy. A few started making arrangements to rent cars and leave. Others stayed, some because they didn’t want to insult Buffett, many because they had no choice.8 Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, on the way to the tournament, had turned his plane around in midair and headed back to New York.9
While these momentous events were occurring, Buffett proceeded with his schedule, compartmentalizing as he did under stress even in extreme situations. He arranged to complete the acquisition of a small business that was already in process. Then he went ahead with a meeting that had been scheduled with the head of Home Depot, Bob Nardelli.10 Afterward he showed up at the Omaha Country Club, where about a hundred guests were milling around or dining on hamburgers and ice cream. Buffett said that things would go on as planned but people should do whatever they needed or wanted to do. Guests wandered in and out of the club making calls and checking the news on television. Tony Pesavento and Gary Wiren, the local pros, followed lunch with a golf lesson, and the tournament got rolling in a surreal atmosphere. Buffett rode a golf cart through a planned circuit of stops at different tees so guests could have their picture taken with him.11 A strange calm hung over the event, which was like a celebrity golf tournament the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. And in fact, like Buffett, more than a few of the golfers could remember Pearl Harbor and its aftermath. This was not an excitable crowd. Most of them were prominent businessmen accustomed to stress and pressure, from a generation of men that considered poise and equanimity in the face of disaster as essential as the suits and ties they wore every day to work.
Buffett had fallen automatically into statesman mode, moving through his routine with smooth composure. Even so, his brain was busy turning over the threat of terrorism and its broader implications for weapons of mass destruction, as well as the possible effect this would have on the economy.
He was more prepared for this than most because he had already been thinking about terrorism risk. In May, he had told General Re and Berkshire Re to cut back on insuring buildings and clients that represented a concentration of exposure to terrorism risk, his mind working as it always did to extrapolate toward potential catastrophes. He had actually cited the World Trade Center as an example of a building complex where a cluster of clients might create too much risk.12 While the rising threat of terrorism in the late 1990s and early-millennium years was no secret, Buffett’s attempt to protect