원문 보기
In 1962, Warren ran his partnership which managed approximately $7 million. He spots a cheap stock. Berkshire Atawe, a textile manufacturer in New England. The company is closing its factories one by one, but each closure releases cash and the stock is trading well below its book value. A typical cigar butt in gram jargon.
One last free puff before throwing away the mega. The plan is simple. Buy, wait for a factory closure, then sell your shares back to the company with a small profit. In 1964, he met the boss Sibery Stanton. They agree verbally. Stanton will buy back its shares at 11.50. And then the offer letter arrives.
The price quoted was 11, 3/8, 11 and 37, half, 1200 and a half less per share than promised. Warren takes it as a personal insult. Instead of selling, he does the opposite. He buys even more shares, taking control of the Vir Ston company. Instant gratification, revenge accomplished. The problem is, he has just married a textile factory in terminal decline.
For 20 years, he fought to restore it. 20 years old. In 1985, he finally closed the last factories. Years later, a journalist asked him how much this mistake had cost him. His answer is $200 billion . Do the math. If instead of stubbornly sticking with textiles, he had put the same money into insurance from the start , Berkshire would be worth twice as much today.
He bluntly calls it the stupidest stock I've ever bought. And yet, and this is what's beautiful, it retains the name Berkshire Hatawe. The name of his biggest mistake became the name of the largest investment empire in history. He does not hide the mistake. He includes it at the top of every letter, every year.
But the story doesn't end there because Warren understood something essential. A company, even with a bad business, is a shell. And inside this shell, we can put something else . March 9, 1967, a banker friend, Charlie Heider, called Jack Ringwalt, an insurer from Oma, who was reportedly selling his company, National Indemnity.
Warren rushes to see him. In a few minutes, without audit, without verification, he shakes hands. 8 million dollars. On the day of the signing, Ringwalt arrives late . His excuse was that he was driving around looking for a parking lot with enough time left so he wouldn't have to pay for parking. Warren thought to himself at that moment, that's my kind of boss.
Why insurance? for a reason that Warren had understood since he was 20 , on a Saturday in 1950 and on August 1 at 20 years old, he had taken the train to Washington, knocked on the door of an insurance agent named Jiko on a Saturday. The concierge had let him in and spent hours with an executive understanding the business.
Insurance is simple. Customers pay their premiums, but claims come later, sometimes years later. Between the two, the gold money is held by both the insurer and the insurer can invest it. This money, which does not belong to him but which he can put to work, has a name: the float. In 1967, National Indemnity contributed 17 million float.
Warren would spend the next 50 years transforming this mechanism into a war machine. Jiko was bought out in its entirety in 1996, then reinsurance. The flute will increase from ten million to over sixty billion. Other people's money invested for its shareholders at almost no cost, provided that it is well insured, without losing money on claims.
Meanwhile, another character enters the scene. In 1959, Warren was introduced to Charlie Müer, a lawyer from Omaha who had settled in California. They become intellectually inseparable. It was Munger who convinced him to give up the mega cigars. His now- famous phrase is: it is far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
Warren listens and he changes. In 1972, at MER's insistence, he paid $25 million for six candies. A Californian chocolatier. Three times its book value. Unthinkable for Graham's student. Messi has something that Meg doesn't. Customers who pay more year after year out of love for the brand. The power to set one's own prices.
Between 1972 and 2007, SIS sent over 1.35 billion in profits to Berkshire, with 32 million reinvested. The same logic applied in 1973 with the Washington Post. Warren buys 12% of the newspaper for a small fee when the company is worth four times its market price. The boss, Katharine Gram, is initially worried.
Who is this man from Omaha picking up his newspaper? He wrote her a letter. Even though my teeth look like the wolf's fangs from Little Red Riding Hood, they are baby teeth. I will not buy another single share without your agreement. They became friends for 40 years. By the end of 1974, the position had lost 25%.
Waren doesn't sell. In 1985, it was worth 221 million. 21 times the stake, two lessons in one. First, when you're in a bad position, get out. The cost of a mistake is not what you lost, it's what that money could have been used for elsewhere. Furthermore, structure matters as much as choices. Float is the idea that your money should work even while you sleep, and that the best money to put to work is the money that costs you nothing.
In 1987, Salomon Brothers was one of the most powerful banks on Wall Street, the queen of the bond market. A predator, Ronald Perelman, wants to swallow him. To defend itself, Salomon sells $700 million worth of convertible preferred stock to Berkshire with a 9% dividend. Waren is playing the white knight on very generous terms for him, let's note.
He never gives anything away . Four years later, the nightmare. A Salomon trader, Paul Mozer, rigged US Treasury bond auctions in 1990 and 1991. False bids to circumvent the rules. When he confessed, the boss John Goodfre and his number 2 hid the affair instead of alerting the authorities. When it comes out, the US Treasury prohibits Salomon from participating in government bond auctions.
For a bonded house, it's a death sentence. That's where Warren, 61, does something he hates. He leaves Omaha for New York and becomes interim president of Solomon. He would later say someone had to take the position. I was the logical person. Makes sense, yes. He has 700 million invested in it. But it's not just about the money.
When he invested in Salomon, he put his reputation on the line, and his reputation is all he has. Before the American Congress, he uttered a phrase that went down in history. First, he requires each employee to ask themselves before each decision whether they would accept seeing it on the front page of the local newspaper read by their family.
And then lose money for the company and I'll understand. Lose even a shred of reputation for the firm and I will show no mercy. He spent 9 months in New York. He fires those in charge, negotiates with the treasury, and restores confidence. Solomon survives. In 1997, the bank was sold to the Travelers group for $9 billion.
Warren comes out with a profit. At the time, his personal fortune was around thirty million. Berkshire A stock is worth $8000. He risked everything, his 26-year reputation for outperformance, to save an investment that had become toxic. And he did it because he had no choice. When your signature is on the line, you do n't delegate the rescue.
In money as elsewhere, trust is the most expensive and most fragile asset. Decades to build, 5 minutes to destroy. Choose who you entrust your money to, like Warren. Choose your leaders based on reputation, not promises. And when something smells bad, act quickly, never sweep the problem under the rug like goodfrund. Yeah.
댓글 0