DESCRIPTION:
This case examines Buffett’s leadership in the financial markets, his principles and the principles of value investing more broadly. This case also examines Buffett as both a thinker and a leader in the world of investing and as an agent of stability in a world of capital markets characterized by continuous change,
discuss Buffett’s investment decisions and the timing of those decisions in the midst of the subprime crisis and in an environment of increasing energy demand.
QUESTIONS: ISSUES TO BE DISCUSSED
Note: Use the questions below to structure your analysis. Please be sure to thoroughly discuss the issues
brought up in these questions. Your analysis report should not be just a sequence of questions and answers.
You are expected to tie the concept together to fashion a cogent report.
1. What are the key issues that Warren Buffett is dealing with? How serious are these issues?
2. Should Buffett change his ways to accommodate growth at Berkshire Hathaway?
3. Who is Warren Buffett? What are some of his characteristics?
4. Describe his investment and life philosophy.
5. How successful is he? Why?
6. Investment in PetroChina: Why did he exit before the IPO? Does it make sense?
7. Why hasn’t he invested in the banking sector and such “fundamentally good companies” as Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch? What do sovereign funds see that he does not? Or is it the other way around?
8. In conclusion, what can we learn from Warren Buffett? Should we dismiss him because we cannot be like him? How can you apply some of his lessons in your own work
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Warren Buffett, the legendary Omaha-based investor, acted quickly on January 23, 2008,
when his company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., bought a 3% stake in the Swiss reinsurance giant
Swiss Re. In addition, Berkshire Hathaway purchased a 20% stake in Swiss Re’s property and
casualty exposure over the next five years.1 On the one hand, some analysts saw this action by
the “Oracle of Omaha” as a signal to move quickly in a sector (financials) and a company (Swiss
Re) that, though beaten down, might present a substantial opportunity (Exhibit 1). On the other
hand, some analysts were surprised that Buffett invested in Swiss Re, given his earlier
investment in General Re, one of Swiss Re’s competitors. They were also surprised by the
investment in Swiss Re’s property and casualty business in light of the soft pricing cycle that the
sector was currently in.2 For Swiss Re, this move clearly meant support for its capital, as the
company intended to continue its stock-buyback program—in fact, after the deal was announced,
Swiss Re declared a (Swiss francs) CHF1.75 billion (US$1.6 billion) stock buyback, on top of a
CHF6 billion buyback the year before (with CHF2.7 billion of that amount already repurchased).
Referring to Berkshire’s investment, Jacques Aigrain, Swiss Re’s chief executive officer, noted,
“They have full freedom to buy or sell as they wish. We are extremely proud to have them as
shareholders.”3 Although Swiss Re’s stock soared 10% following the announcement, it had
subsided by the end of the trading day, closing up only 3.7%.
By his own admission, Warren Buffett had been “lollygagging around,” unable to find
good investment opportunities for his almost $50 billion in cash during the past year or so.4 He
had gotten back into the market the previous month, spending $6 billion to acquire NRG, a
Dutch insurer, and 60% of Marmon, a holding company that had a variety of industrial segments,
including a company that manufactured rail cars. Marmon was owned by Chicago’s well-known
Pritzker family, and the sale allowed some family members to monetize their investments and
diversify.
Haig Simonian and Francesco Guerrera, “Buffett Move Boosts Swiss Re,” Financial Times, 24 January 2008.
Judy Greenwald, “Berkshire Buys Stake in Swiss Re,” Business Insurance, 28 January 2008.
3
Simonian and Guerrera, “Buffett Move Boosts Swiss Re.”
4
Francesco Guerrera, “Lollygagging Ends with Classic Buffett Deal,” Financial Times, 24 January 2008.
1
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WARREN E. BUFFETT, 2008
This case was prepared from public documents by Professor Yiorgos Allayannis. It was written as a basis for class
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These recent acquisitions notwithstanding, a large amount of Berkshire Hathaway’s cash
was dormant, earning little compared with what investors had come to expect from Warren
Buffett and his company. If he could not find an attractive opportunity, the cash would continue
to sit idle, earning subpar returns. But Buffett was famous for both his patience and his ability to
make a quick move at the most auspicious moment. The Swiss Re deal was thus characteristic of
Buffett’s investments. Yet now that success had brought him ample capital, he faced the problem
of “putting capital to work.” It was not unlike the problem faced by many large corporations:
how to control and manage growth. Although not entirely new to him, the challenge had never
been more complex. And critics were quick to question whether a stake in Swiss Re would
significantly help Buffet continue his 30-year winning streak. Considering the changes taking
place in the world around him, would he be better served by abandoning his customary practice
of “value investing,” as exemplified by his purchase of Swiss Re, and pursuing growth in other
ways?
Despite Buffett’s apparent desire to uphold his traditional investment strategies,
Berkshire Hathaway would inevitably change, and for distinctly organic reasons. In Berkshire’s
2006 Annual Report, Buffett essentially ran an ad for a candidate to “succeed me as Berkshire’s
chief investment officer when the need for someone to do that arises,” adding, “I feel terrific, and
according to all measurable indicators, am in excellent health.” Not quite attributing this state of
affairs to his infamous “diet,” he joked, “It’s amazing what Cherry Coke and hamburgers will do
for a fellow.” The right person would be “genetically programmed to avoid serious risks,
including those never before encountered.” Other talents would include “independent thinking,
emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior.” The
successful candidate would then conduct a study of Buffett and Berkshire and be ready to take
over should anything happen.5
Recent Investment Moves
In April 2007, Buffett made what was thought to be his first investment in railroads,
buying a 10% stake in Burlington Northern Santa Fe. The investment was widely believed to
have been motivated by a marked global increase in energy demand. Railroads provided a
“cleaner” way to transport commodities than did trucks, and thus stood to benefit from any
growth in energy demand. What was surprising about this investment was that, unlike many of
Buffett’s investments in fundamentally good stocks that had been beaten down for one reason or
another, Burlington Northern seemed to have been on the upswing, trading in the high 80s from
the low 50s two years earlier, in April 2005.
In late December 2007, in the midst of the subprime-mortgage crisis, Buffett announced a
small investment of $105 million to fund Berkshire Hathaway Assurance Corporation (BHAC), a
start-up bond-insurance company that would insure bonds issued by cities, counties, and states to
finance schools, roads, and other public projects. The public was largely unfamiliar with this old
Berkshire Hathaway, Annual Report (2006); Carol Loomis, “Buffett Seeks a ‘New Buffett,’” Fortune (1
March 2007).
5
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and somewhat mysterious sector of public financing, whereby states, cities, and counties often
financed public-works projects through the issuance of bonds. Demand for those bonds tended
not to be as high as that for bonds of publicly traded corporations because investors worried
about the possibility of default in the public sector, which was significantly less transparent than
publicly traded corporations. In order to assuage these fears of default risk in public entities,
bond insurers needed capital (of which Buffett had plenty) and a stellar credit rating (AAA),
which BHAC was also expected to have. Nevertheless, BHAC faced many risks, including
transparency issues and the possibility that public entities would overspend and Berkshire would
have to foot the bill (a “moral hazard” problem). Buffett had taken a wait-and-see approach with
the new business, seeding it with initial capital that would allow it to underwrite potentially
around $16 billion in new business under moderate leverage. In comparison, the two leading
bond-insurance companies, MBIA and Ambac Assurance, insured a combined $700 billion in
municipal debt.6
Buffett’s entrance into the bond-insurance sector was “typical Buffett.” Shortly before he
made his move, MBIA and Ambac Assurance had been caught in the subprime-mortgage crisis,
having significantly underwritten such structured products as subprime-mortgage-backed
securities. With the weakening housing market leading to mortgage defaults, there was a
dramatic revaluation of these complex structured securities. As a result, MBIA’s and Ambac’s
shares were down for 2007, by 74% and 72%, respectively. The losses threatened the firms’
coveted AAA ratings, which rating agencies suggested might be difficult to sustain without new
infusions of capital.7 Buffett had suggested that he would not underwrite structured products, in
line with his well-known mantra that one should be interested in “investing only in things that
you understand.” Buffett had missed the tech run-up of the late 1990s by sticking to his mantra,
and judging from Berkshire’s overall performance, it was clear that doing so had cost him little.
Buffett’s investing in bond insurance highlighted the importance of the sector and
exemplified some of his investment acumen and philosophy, as expressed in the 2006 Annual
Report to Berkshire’s shareholders: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others
are fearful.” It was both an opportunistic and a well-conceived move. His bet was that
municipalities would see him as a “sure thing,” and though they might be forced to pay a
premium price to insure their bonds with him instead of some other insurer, bondholders would
ultimately be willing to accept them for a lower yield (cost) than if they had been insured by
someone without Buffett’s reputation. Furthermore, Buffett stood to benefit from the current
troubles of the bond insurers, especially if their credit ratings were downgraded.
6
Karen Richardson, “The Buzz: Bond Insurers Brace for Buffett; Market’s Major Players Already under
Pressure from Mortgage Fiasco,” Wall Street Journal, 29 December 2007, B3.
7
Yael Bizouati, “Buffett Shakes up Monolines: His Entry May Benefit the Industry but Not Existing Players,”
Investment Dealers Digest, 14 January 2008. In early 2008, Fitch Ratings placed the AAA ratings of MBIA, Ambac,
and FGIC on “rating watch negative.” XL Capital was placed under review, and Fitch said it needed to raise $2
billion. The agency also warned that unless MBIA was able to obtain further capital commitments—in addition to
the $1 billion capital commitment the company had received from Warburg Pincus—within six weeks, it would
downgrade MBIA’s rating by one notch, to AA+.
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Buffett was revered for consistently capitalizing on such situations. At the same time, the
capital initially provided for BHAC was not especially large, given Berkshire Hathaway’s scale,
which made some wonder why Buffett was unwilling to enter this new territory more forcefully.
Did he think that the current players in the market were “too big to fail”? In other words, might
there be some government intervention in the works that would help his competitors recover?
Was he unsure of his own ability to run that particular business? Or was he simply being
conservative, in line with his other mantra: “avoid risk”? Nevertheless, some believed that
BHAC augured yet more success for Buffett. Donald Light, a senior analyst who tracked the
insurance industry for Boston-based Celent, a financial-research and -consulting firm, said
simply, “I learned a long time ago: Do not bet against Warren Buffett.”8
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After the fact, of course, many deals seemed obvious to many people. What was
interesting about Buffett was that some of his deals made sense and were “kind of obvious”
before the fact. What was it that he saw and others did not? What was it that made him act and
others not? Was it capital or acumen or both? Or was it leadership?
What baffled many “Buffettologists”9 about the Oracle of Omaha was his unwillingness
to take any stake in the recently hit banking sector. With some banks and financial-services
companies losing as much as 40% of their market values since the summer of 2007 because of
their involvement with complex securities linked to subprime mortgages, one might have
expected Buffett to go in and pick up valuable franchises at discount prices. Some analysts
thought that Buffett would be interested in Bear Stearns or Merrill Lynch, but he had not been
enticed by what he had seen (Exhibit 2); instead, several sovereign funds10 had stepped up:
Temasek of Singapore and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority had provided some much-needed
capital to Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, respectively, while the Chinese government had made a
$5 billion investment in Morgan Stanley, all during the past three months.
Critics observed that Buffett might have had bad memories of the Salomon Brothers deal
back in 1991: He took control of Salomon Brothers (which later became part of Citigroup) in the
midst of a scandal involving illegal bids in a Treasury auction and in an environment that was
still recovering from the S&L crisis of the late 1980s. It took him 10 years to sell his investment
in Salomon Brothers, which ended up being one of his worst performers.11 “So far, we have not
seen a deal that causes me to start salivating,” Buffett told CNBC in December 2007. “People
know our phone number, and we haven’t seen anything we wanted to move on.”12 Others noted
that he already had key investments in that sector, including U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo. Still,
8
“Bonded by Buffett; As Berkshire Hathaway Quietly Moves into the Business of Municipal Bond Insurance,
Rivals and Bond Issuers Question the Outcome,” BusinessWeek Online, 31 December 2007.
9
This term was used broadly to refer to observers who watched Buffett’s every move in order to understand
him.
10
Government-owned funds rumored to have as much as $2 trillion in assets under management and often
criticized for their lack of transparency and the political motivation behind their investment decisions.
11
Francesco Guerrera and James Politi, “Berkshire Caps a Week of Dazzling Dealing,” Financial Times, 29
December 2007, 19.
12
Guerrera and Politi, “Berkshire Caps a Week.”
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In recent years, Buffett had focused on emerging markets, in particular, China. In 2003,
he bought a large stake in PetroChina, which made him its largest shareholder after Beijing. At
the time, PetroChina was trading only in Hong Kong and New York. But in 2007, Buffett started
selling shares of PetroChina, and by October 2007, he had sold all his positions in it. He believed
that the “bubble” in China was “too hot” and that it was wise to exit when he did.13 A week after
Buffett sold his stake, PetroChina had an initial public offering in Shanghai, and investors drove
the stock to new highs, but it soon started falling: By mid-January 2008, it was down almost
40%.
Buffett had also been in the news for his largest investment ever: his decision to give the
bulk of his vast fortune, at the time estimated at more than $40 billion, to the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, whose main mission was to fight diseases worldwide, including malaria,
AIDS, and tuberculosis. Buffett joined Bill and Melinda Gates as a trustee of the foundation. The
giving would take place in stages over a number of years, “as long as at least one of the two
Gateses are active in it.”14
Why did he decide to leave his fortune to the Gates Foundation? He had been friends of
the Gateses for a long time, and was impressed with the way they pursued their mission. But one
could imagine there was more to it than that: Real leaders produced real results, and in the
Gateses, Buffett recognized true leadership abilities and a selfless passion for what they did. In
many ways, this act of philanthropy was Buffett’s most significant investment. And in typical
Buffett fashion, eschewing “diversification,” he made it in only one foundation.
Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway
Warren Buffett was the second-richest man on the planet, with an estimated net worth of
$52 billion.15 His massive fortune was the result of his investments in Berkshire Hathaway, a
holding company—that is, a company that invested in other companies and often had controlling
stakes in them and also invested independently in stocks across a variety of sectors. Berkshire
Hathaway had holdings in insurance (General Re, Geico), apparel (Fruit of the Loom), and home
furnishings (R. C. Willey), among others, as well as noncontrolling stakes in such iconic firms as
Coca-Cola, American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bancorp. Buffett was
also famous for his insistence on living quietly in Omaha, Nebraska, and for having studied
under Professor Benjamin Graham, the guru of value investing, at Columbia University in the
1950s.
Jason Kirby, “PetroChina’s Trillion-Dollar Market Debut,” Maclean’s, 19 November 2007, 140.
Carol J. Loomis, “Warren Buffett Gives It Away,” Fortune (10 July 2006): 56.
15
“The World’s Billionaires,” Forbes.com, http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/10/07billionaires_Warren
-Buffett_C0R3.html (accessed 13 March 2008).
13
14
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Buffett’s disengagement from the financial sector begged the question whether the sovereign
funds saw something that he did not.
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Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway had had an amazing run. A recent academic
study that analyzed the performance of Berkshire Hathaway’s equity portfolio found that
Berkshire Hathaway was best characterized as a large-cap growth fund that had beaten the
market 28 out of 31 years, a performance that placed it in the 99.99th percentile. Specifically,
between 1976 and 2006, Berkshire’s stock portfolio beat the S&P 500 Index by 14.65% and a
value-weighted index of all stocks by 10.91%. Overall, the authors argued that Berkshire
Hathaway’s results were consistent with investment skill rather than luck (see Exhibit 3 for a
view of Berkshire Hathaway’s performance in 2002–08).16
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Warren Buffett’s Philosophy (Investment and Otherwise)
Warren Buffett was famous for value investing: identifying and investing in undervalued
firms that were likely to bounce back. As evidenced by his portfolio, he also liked to invest in
large companies that had consistent earnings and low debt and that operated in either
oligopolistic or near-monopolistic markets. Most important, he liked to invest in companies that
had good management teams and high-quality corporate governance and that were involved in a
business he could “understand.” Buffett was well known not only for his investment wisdom but
also for his overall wisdom about life. Numerous books and articles on this aspect of Buffett17
contained the following nuggets:
On the importance of working with the right people:
I choose to work with every single person that I work with. That ends up being the
most important factor. I don’t interact with people I don’t like or admire. That’s
the key. It’s like marrying.18
On the usefulness of applying a skill acquired in one job to another:
I am a better investor because I am a businessman and a better businessman
because I am an investor.19
I feel the same way about managing that I do about investing: it’s not necessary
to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.20
On his investment philosophy and sticking to his principles even as the world was
constantly changing:
16
Gerald S. Martin and John Puthenpurackal, “Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Warren Buffett and
Berkshire Hathaway” (working paper, American University and University of Nevada–Las Vegas, 2007).
17
See, for example, Janet Lowe, Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World’s Greatest Investor
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007).
18
“How to Live with a Billion,” Fortune (11 September 1989): 20.
19
Robert Lanner, “Warren Buffett’s Idea of Heaven: I Don’t Have to Work with People I Don’t Like,” Forbes
(18 October 1993).
20
Letter from Warren Buffett to Mr. and Mrs. William H. Gates III, 26 June 2006, widely circulated over the
Internet and reprinted in Janet Lowe, Warren Buffett Speaks.
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Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.21
Independent, critical thinking was of paramount importance for a leader and an investor.
On whether he should rely on the recommendations of brokers:
Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.23
Because investing was about the future, he cautioned that one needed to be able to
understand change:
Anything that can’t go on forever will end.24
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He advocated personal evolution and the ability to change without abandoning one’s
principles, but admitted that change might not always go smoothly:
I evolved. I did not go from ape to human or human to ape in a nice even
manner.25
What Lay Ahead
Warren Buffett had withstood the test of time. He was in a league of his own because no
one else (including such other legendary investors as Peter Lynch) had had such a consistent, and
lengthy, record. Throughout the years, he had shown remarkable leadership in the world of
investing, even as the world around him had changed many times and often in dramatic ways. It
was perhaps his ability to anticipate change that had served him so well, together with his unique
timing and discipline. In tough times, Buffett had not hesitated to take action, as his involvement
with Salomon Brothers would suggest, though even he was not always right. But his insights
(based on unerring instincts) were so clear and, in some ways, so “obvious” that one might well
wonder why there were not more like him. What was it that made Warren Buffett Warren
Buffett? Critics had tried to poke holes in what Buffett did, or did not do, and had also focused
on who the “new Buffett” would be and whether the “new” environment of hedge funds, private
equity, and sovereign funds competing for cheap assets, and thereby pushing asset prices higher,
had made him lose some of his edge. In his inimitable style, Buffett responded, “I can spend
money faster than Imelda Marcos when things are right,” referring to the former Philippine First
Lady and renowned shopper.26 But things had not been “right” in this new environment for quite
a while. And Imelda Marcos never cared about the price.
Carol J. Loomis, “The Inside Story on Warren Buffett,” Fortune (11 April 1988): 26.
Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, 1988.
23
Janet Lowe, Warren Buffett Speaks.
24
“The New Establishment 50,” Vanity Fair (October 1995): 280.
25
L. J. Davis, “Buffett Takes Stock,” New York Times Magazine (1 April 1990): 16.
26
Karen Richardson, “After the Tumult, Is It Buffett Time?” Wall Street Journal, 21 August 2007, C1.
21
22
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If principles can become dated, they’re not principles.22
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Exhibit 2
Performance of Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, 2002–08
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Exhibit 1
WARREN E. BUFFETT, 2008
Swiss Re’s Performance, 2002–08
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Exhibit 3
WARREN E. BUFFETT, 2008
Berkshire Hathaway’s Performance, 2002–08