Full Q&A morning session from the 2004 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting with the world’s richest man and most successful investor, Warren Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger.
Q2 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
AM 2004 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting With Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger - FULL Q&A
Transcript
Before we get started I especially like to thank Andy Hayward who's here today. And if we can we can find him out of the crowd. A little hard to see from up here. But Andy runs deagh productions. He does that cartoon for us and let's give him a big hand. Andy has produced a really extraordinary series telling the story of the beginning of this country called Liberty's Kids. It's been on public broadcasting the last couple of years. It's great for kids but it's great for adults too. I've watched a number of sessions myself and this summer in July it will go on sale at Wal-Mart a very special celebration. And for those of you who want to pick out something good for your children or your grandchildren I can't think of a better series to have them watching. Thanks again Andy and thanks also to Kelly. Much more. Who puts this whole production on this is Kelly show she along with that dog Dudley who you saw in the movie Dudley is a regular at Berkshire Hathaway we don't count him in the fifteen point eight. But but she along with Dudley handle everything. I don't even give a thought to what's going to happen here. It's become evident during the meeting. And as she is responsible for putting up that whole exhibition arrangement and really the whole thing so I don't know where you are exactly but in any event thank you very much. Now we'll go through the business part of the meeting and it may take a little longer than than usual but please be patient.
And I'd like to start out by calling the meeting to order. I'm Warren Buffett chairman of the board of Berkshire Hathaway and I welcome you to this meeting. This hyperkinetic fellow next to me is Charlie Munger the vice chairman and we will have a good time and I hope you do too. We work together because he can hear and I can see. I mean it's there are times when we can't remember each other's name. But but but we have a lot of fun together. Now any shareholder who wishes to speak regarding the shareholder proposal expected to be presented by Human Life International or any other matters germane to the shareholders meeting should now go to a microphone zones one which is in Section 121 over on my right or Section 2. Which is that section 221 I believe that's higher up on my right and see if I have that right. Yeah or our go to Section B Section 7 which is Section 105 which is microtones 7 on my left or to Section 205 which is microphone 8. If you'll go to if you're going to want to talk about anything concerning the business of the meeting not the questions afterwards but just that relates to the matters germane to the meeting. Please please go there now because I'm not going be able to spot people in a crowd this size. And when it comes time to do the business we're going to ask anybody that cares to speak up on the business to be at those microphones and that will be in just a couple of minutes now after adjournment of the business meeting.
I'll respond to questions that you may have that relate to the business of the Berkshire but they don't call for any action at the meeting. We had some complaints after last year that some people were asking six or seven part questions. At least that's the reason I'm giving that we're limiting those. The bigger reason to Charlotte I can't remember the first part. By the time we get to the fifth part so we we are asking asking you to ask only one question and and don't try to get too clever about working three or four into a single question and that will give more people a chance to get their questions asked. Only only one question at a time and we will go around from microphone to microphone and get as many as we can now we're going to do this until noon and then we'll take a break for lunch and we'll come back about one and we'll continue until 330 and anything goes on the questions we'll answer almost anything except questions about what we may be buying or selling it. You're free of course to wander around Gober and buy things you know where we've have a lot of things for sale over there. It's as I've pointed out in the past it's better form to leave while Charlie is speaking than when I'm speaking but you can use your own.
