“I’ve not seen evidence that convinces me I’ll be more likely to make it to 100 if I suddenly switched to water and broccoli”, said Mr. Buffett, who gets 700 of his daily calories from fizzy drinks and often jests that he is one-quarter Coke.
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“I don’t think you’d want your son to grow up and run a company in the manner that Valeant was run”, Mr Buffett said.
Overall, the main attraction of the shareholders meeting, says Hull, was Buffett’s discussions about the economy and the companies he’s watching.
Buffett, a staunch supporter of Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, was asked about the regulatory impact on Berkshire if Republican front-runner Donald Trump wins the 2016 USA presidential election.
Ackman said that Valeant was “probably the cheapest large company I’ve seen in my career”, and that he had no plans to sell the company’s “crown jewels” despite numerous inquiries from other drug makers regarding Valeant’s assets.
Mr Buffett, who has ordered that most of the money he is not giving away at his death should be placed in an index fund, also said active investing as a whole was “certain” to produce worse-than-average results.
Laval, Que.-based Valeant has been under a microscope recently over the company’s practice of rapidly boosting prices for some of its drug products.
“They were robbing our hospital”.
Current and former Valeant Pharmaceuticals officials were grilled by Congress last week over the company’s strategy of takeover older medicines with limited competition and then pushing up their prices many times above previous levels.
Over the past 17 years, Buffett said, while the number of Berkshire shares has remained fairly steady, the company’s operating profits declined five times and increased the 12 other years, from less than $1 billion in 1999 to a peak last year at $17.36 billion.
His Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has held major stakes in American Express and Coca-Cola for decades, so the company would face a significant tax bill on the gains if he did ever sell those investments.
Warren Buffett says it would be better to put your money under a mattress rather than a bank if negative interest rates kick in.
“You have a choice of consuming more than you use”, he said.
Buffett says he likes owning roughly 15 percent of American Express’ stock even though competitors are trying to develop a better way to process payments.
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Net metering policies force utility companies in Nevada, which Berkshire Hathaway owns, to purchase electricity produced by rooftop solar panels at triple retail rates, which makes it hard for Nevada’s utility company to the cover the costs of a fixed electrical grid.
