Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett released his annual letter to shareholders late last month, and Gulf Bank & Trust President Guy Williams has things to say about it.
He shared them this week with WWL’s Newell Normand.
“It was a great letter,” said Williams. “And really, everyone has their own take.”
His first takeaway from the letter was humility.
“I thought Warren Buffett did a wonderful tribute to Charlie Munger,” Williams Explained. “And he, he basically said that after he had bought Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger told him, he had made the wrong decision. And Warren Buffett, to his credit, was willing to listen.”
Munger was the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. He died in November.
“He told me – correctly! – that I had made a dumb decision in buying control of Berkshire,” said Buffett of Munger in his letter. “But, he assured me, since I had already made the move, he would tell me how to correct my mistake.”
That was in the mid-1960s, and Buffett admitted that he did continue making mistakes before finally listening to Munger. When Munger became a partner in the business, he would keep Buffett from making those mistakes, said the “Oracle of Omaha” in his letter.
Williams said this demonstrates a lot of humility. He also said that Buffett did a good job at addressing: the pitfalls of generally accepted accounting practices, avoiding dishonest people, and what recent natural disasters reveal about electricity in the U.S.
Listen to Williams full conversation with Normand here.