The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [558]
65. Byrne has told this story more vividly in times past. In Roger Lowenstein’s Buffett: The Making of a American Capitalist (New York: Doubleday, 1996), he supposedly said to Sheeran, “Here’s your fucking license. We are no longer a citizen of the state of New Jersey.” He calls Sheeran “the worst insurance commissioner ever.”
66. Disgruntled employees, hearing the news about their jobs, started throwing policies out the top-story window. “Files were floating all around North Jersey in the air,” says Byrne. Nobody knew this until GEICO moved the claims office to Philadelphia, “when we went to move the files and they weren’t there.” Byrne estimates the lost data cost the company as much as $30–40 million in excess claims. GEICO also gave up its license in Massachusetts. It stopped writing business in many other states without surrendering the right to do so in the future. In total, the company nonrenewed 400,000 out of its 2.2 million policyholders.
67. Interview with Jack Byrne. The author first heard this story from a secretary who formerly worked for Byrne.
68. Interview with Tony Nicely. The length of these meetings sounds incredible, but Byrne seemed to have an almost superhuman energy.
69. Interview with Jack Byrne.
70. James L. Rowe Jr., “Fireman’s Fund Picks Byrne,” Washington Post, July 24, 1985; Sarah Oates, “Byrne Pulled GEICO Back from Edge of Bankruptcy,” Washington Post, July 24, 1985.
71. Graham Group members, Buffett friends, and Berkshire employees such as Marshall Weinberg, Wyndham Robertson, Verne McKenzie, Gladys Kaiser, Bob Goldfarb, Tom Bolt, Hallie Smith, Howie Buffett, and Peter Buffett all remember Grossman fondly.
Chapter 41
1. Christopher Ogden, Legacy, A Biography of Moses and Walter Annenberg. Boston: Little, Brown, 1999; John Cooney, The Annenbergs: The Salvaging of a Tainted Dynasty. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982.
2. Ogden, in Legacy, cites Annenberg as saying he declined to buy the Washington Times-Herald from Colonel McCormick and convinced McCormick to sell to the Grahams despite their reservations about Phil Graham’s drinking and mental stability. Thus, he felt responsible for putting together the newspaper marriage that made the Washington Post what it had become. He felt slighted because the Grahams had never credited him. Buffett says that Annenberg was exaggerating his role and that Graham viewed this notion as ridiculous.
3. Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry-Go-Round: Annenberg Lifts Some British Brows,” Washington Post, February 24, 1969.
4. Buffett’s recollection of Annenberg’s perspective on Nixon.
5. Description of the Annenbergs’ reactions is from Legacy. Drew Pearson, “Senators Wary on Choice of Annenberg,” Washington Post, March 5, 1969.
6. The comparison with Nixon was made by Annenberg’s biographers.
7. In fact, the Annenbergs’ investment of time, personal funds, and good judgment in a thoughtful restoration of Winfield House, the ambassadorial residence, played a key role in their acceptance in Britain.
8. C. David Heymann, The Georgetown Ladies’ Social Club (New York: Atria Books, 2003) and Legacy. This is Walter Annenberg’s account, and there is no telling what was really said. But, by all accounts, he was offended.
9. In the end, he gave most of his money to the Annenberg Foundation and his art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
10. Lally Weymouth, “Foundation Woes: The Saga of Henry Ford II, Part II,” New York Times Magazine, March 12, 1978.
11. Walter Annenberg letter to Warren Buffett, October 1, 1992.
12. Donner was not entirely obliterated. In 1960, seven years after he died at age eighty-nine, the $44 million in assets in his foundation was divided equally—between a newly formed Donner Foundation and the original foundation, which changed its name to the Independence Foundation (www.independencefoundation.org).
13. Walter Annenberg