The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [481]
Here it was, Buffett’s delirium dream. To pull it off had taken hanging out with the world’s best bodybuilder and a little camera magic, but he had finally done it. He had made it into the modern-day equivalent of the Big Arms book. Pudgy Stockton would be so impressed.
The audience roared. Then the movie rolled on, featuring Warren and Charlie, but especially Warren as a superhero, in any number of guises. Most of the skits and cartoons emphasized Buffett and Munger as cheapskates.
Afterward, the auditorium went dark for a moment. Then while the stage lights rose, Susie, in a pink sweater and skirt, looking a few pounds lighter, walked briskly out onto the floor toward the directors’ section immediately in front of the stage and sat down. Next, Buffett and Munger entered like a couple of graying talk-show hosts and sat down at a white-cloth-covered table. Enormous screens displaying them had been positioned all around the arena, so everybody got a close-up look. Buffett was staring out at a dark arena filled with flashing lights and as many people as would show up in Nebraska to see the Rolling Stones.
Before taking questions, Buffett kicked off the meeting with rapid efficiency to cover a normally perfunctory five-minute business agenda of electing directors, ratifying auditors, and the like. This year, almost immediately, one of the shareholders stood up at a microphone and said in a timid voice that he was withholding his vote; he offered a motion from the floor. He asked that Buffett consider using some of the CEOs of his companies as directors because they were better qualified than Susie and Howie Buffett.
An audible ripple shuddered across the auditorium. The motion, even though presented in a respectful tone, fell like a big wet blot to mar the smooth, engraved surface of the shareholder meeting agenda. Most of the audience was shocked. Berkshire was now the fourteenth-largest business in the United States, with over 172,000 employees, $64 billion in revenues, and profits of $8 billion a year. But it remained at heart a family corporation; as the largest shareholder, Buffett had the votes to elect a couple of board seats for family members if he wanted. He saw his family’s role in Berkshire as similar to the Walton family’s at Wal-Mart, a nexus between the Buffett Foundation and the company. Unquestionably, the way he chose his board was purely personal, although some board members happened to be successful businessmen.
“Thank you,” said Buffett. “Charlie, do you have any thoughts on that?”
This punting to Munger—no quick comeback or pithy comment—was a measure of Buffett’s complete discomfiture. However, it also put Munger on the spot, since anything he said might imply that he had some influence on how Buffett chose his board. He had none whatsoever, so Munger simply said, “I think we should go on to the next item.”
Another motion came to the floor. Tom Strobhar, on behalf of Human Life International, one of the organizations that had boycotted Berkshire Hathaway and successfully forced the company to end its charitable-contributions program, gave a speech about abortion that was, as he later wrote, “ostensively [sic]” disguised as a proposal that Berkshire publish a list of its political donations.7
Buffett merely said in response that Berkshire hadn’t made any political donations. The motion was voted down.
The business section of the meeting had now consumed half an hour instead of its usual five minutes and for the first time had borne a vaguely unpleasant resemblance to the Coca-Cola meeting. All this time, shareholders holding written-out questions had been patiently lined up at the numbered platforms equipped with microphones stationed all around the arena. Now Buffett opened the questioning by asking to hear from “microphone number one.” As the questions began, his wheels churned on the