Warren Buffett Retiring

[silverscreenselect]

Warren Buffet, who is 94, announced he will be retiring as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of the year. Vice-chairman Greg Abel, whom Buffett named as his eventual successor four years ago, will then take over.

The news about Buffett struck a personal note for me. I had a friend named Bill when I was in college who was a few years older than me. Bill had started Georgia Tech earlier and then goofed around too much and either flunked or dropped out (he was always hazy on providing details). Bill then went to Vietnam for a year as a lieutenant (he was also hazy on the details of how he went in as an officer), then returned to Tech about the same time I started. We kept in touch over the years and talked about everything, often having hour-long conversations.

One of his favorite topics was Warren Buffett, and he talked about how he had invested in Berkshire Hathaway when he was young and just held onto the stock. I asked Bill if and when he planned to sell, and he said he'd hold it as long as Buffett was running the company. I keep reminding him that Buffett was no "spring chicken" and he said Buffett still had more on the ball than a lot of guys 20 years younger.

Bill died a year and a half ago. His funeral was the same day that my wife broke her hip and had to be taken for surgery, and I couldn't attend. Then I got very sick while trying to get my wife into rehab, so I couldn't be with her, and my daughter had to take care of that. All in all, that was the worst Christmas and the worst month of my life. Bill's sister took care of the finances in his last couple of years when his mind started to go. I never did find out what happened to his Berkshire Hathaway stock.

[Bob Juch]

Buffett has said his investment in the Berkshire Hathaway textile mills was probably his worst investment ever. The textile company he took over in 1965 bled money for many years before Buffett finally shut it down in 1985, though Berkshire did provide cash for some of Buffett's early acquisitions.