Rare video and audio of full Q&A session from the 1995 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting with the world’s richest man and most successful investor and his partner. Plus some of the non-boring pre-Q&A able left in as it covered the vote on right to issue shares and Warren explaining it. Work syncing the audio was necessary! It still slightly slows over time, but with several re-syncs, it is close as we can get it.
Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc, Also read Lear Capital: Financial Products You Should Avoid?
1995 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting: Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger
Transcript
Morning I'm Warren Buffett chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. And on my left is Charlie Munger the vice chairman of my partner and we'll try to get him to say a few words at some point in the proceedings. The format today is going to be just slightly different. We have we have one item two. Normally we breezed through the meeting pretty fast and we'll will do that but we have one item of business on the preferred stock that I could tell caused some confusion with people so I'll discuss that a little bit and if before the vote on that anybody would like to talk about the preferred issue we'll have any comments or questions at that time and then we'll breeze through the rest of the meeting and then we'll we'll open it up and I'll have one announcement to make then two. And then after that we'll go for maybe close to noon and feel free earlier. Anybody that would like to leave you're free to obviously at any time better form to do it while Charlie is talking as I've mentioned and you'll have to be quick. The but that we'll have a have a break a little before noon for a few minutes while a more orderly retreat can be conducted and we'll have buses outside to take you back to the hotels or to any of the commercial establishments that are teachers involved. And and then and then because so many of them we have we have people here at least based on the tickets reserved from 49 of the 50 states only only Vermont is absent.
We have but we have a Lasko why we have where we have a delegation from every place we have people from Australia Israel Sweden France UK 40 some from Canada. So people a lot of people have come a long way so Charlie and I will stick around that will lead our lunch right up here and we will we will. You don't want to we want to watch what we eat. But they will stick around until the perhaps as late as even three o'clock. But if the crowd gets below a couple of hundred and we'll feel we can cut it off but we do want to we do want to answer everyone's questions you people are are part owners of of the company and any any question that that relates to your ownership of Berkshire we want to be able to give you a chance to ask and it's tough because of the numbers of people here. I don't know how many are in the other room but there are about 3300 I believe in this room and we want to get you to all of you so that will come after the after the meeting. Now we've got a little business to take care of. The second night of a business of this meeting is to consider the recommendation that board directors to amend the company certificate of incorporation. The proposed amendment would add a provision to the Certificate of Incorporation authorizing the board of directors to issue up the 1 million shares of preferred stock and one or more series with such preferences limitations and relative rights as the board of directors may determine how we discuss the sum in the in the annual report.
But I would say and we'll find out the exact number but I think we probably had an 11 or 12 maybe 12000 thousand or so shares voted against the proposal. I think we had a couple of thousand shares that abstained. And since there really is no downside to the proposal that indicated to me that that had not done a very adequate job of explaining the logic of authorising.
