on the 50th anniversary of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment fund-cum-industrial conglomerate that employs 341,000 people and is the fourth most valuable company in the US, the question is: is Warren Buffett inimitable? Or could the Sage of Omaha be cloned?
Charlie Munger, his long-time partner, thinks that too few people try to mimic him. “I believe that versions of the Berkshire system should be tried more often elsewhere,” he writes in this year’s golden anniversary letter to shareholders. The “system” is a benign dictatorship, “relying much on one thoughtful leader for a long, long time, as he kept improving”.
We cannot all be 84 years old — not for a while, anyway — but it is strange that so few funds or companies work like Berkshire Hathaway, given its enormous success. Mindful of time passing, Mr Buffett and Mr Munger both reflect at length in their letter on how he operates. It seems to me to boil down to three precepts, two of which can be applied by others, and the third not.