The crowd is smaller than last year’s 50th anniversary meeting but still dwarfs any other corporate meeting.
Advertisement
Berkshire Vice Chairman Charles Munger, 92, said those who cite soda’s detriments make the “ghastly error” of not also considering the advantages of consuming the drinks.
In presidential politics, Buffett has long supported Democrat Hillary Clinton, so one shareholder asked what might happen to Berkshire if Republican Donald Trump were elected.
A huge hall in the CenturyLink Center here is reserved for booths run by Berkshire’s several dozen portfolio companies, from well-known names like Fruit of the Loom and NetJets to lesser-known industrial giants like Precision Castparts and Lubrizol. “I would say Mark is one of a kind”.
Buffett’s partner Charlie Munger, who previous year made headlines with comments about the company, also chimed in.
“It was a very unfortunate period when the manager got overly entranced” by a company whose business model was “enormously flawed”, Buffett said.
Buffett said that it was unfortunate that Sequoia took such a large position in Valeant, saying the investment firm was “entranced” by Valeant’s business model.
Berkshire owns 400 million shares of Coke, about 9 percent of the company.
Speaking to tens of thousands of shareholders at Berkshire’s annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, Buffett and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger also touched on many other issues including the 2016 USA presidential election, the risks of derivatives, and big losses at a mutual fund closely associated with Berkshire.
Berkshire’s large conglomerate of more than 90 companies and investments shields individual subsidiaries from that pressure.
As a result, operating profit at Berkshire dropped in the quarter.
Shareholder David Parr said eventually replacing Buffett has to be a concern for Berkshire shareholders because of his age and remarkable talent, but he’s confident that Buffett has a good plan in place and has a knack for choosing good people. “The culture is so long range”. Instead of drafting a quarterly earnings report and preparing to deal with questions from investors, Precision Castparts executives can focus on running the business, Khetani said.
“Railroad carloading throughout the industry – all of the major railroads – were down significantly in the first quarter, and probably nearly certainly will continue to be down for the balance of the year”, Buffett said.
Advertisement
The meeting gave the environmentalists and Nebraskans for Peace a prominent platform even if the resolution failed.
