Author: Darren Rickard

Believe it or not you can learn to invest exactly like this legendary investor in about 5 minutes

Investing like Warren Buffett couldn’t be easier. There are a lot of scammers, gurus and talking heads trying to tell you it is a big mystery and you need to pay them to find out how to do it but in this article I can show you how to do it in 5 minutes – for free!

Like many legends, the rumors about Buffett’s style are exaggerated, twisted and sometimes just fabricated. For example, Buffett is often quoted as saying that “diversification is a protection against ignorance.” But did he really mean it?

He made a similar comment to this in 1998 to a group of MBA students at the University of Florida (see full video above or download transcript ) is often quoted that reads as follows…

“…Once you are in the businesses of evaluating businesses and you decide that you are going to bring the effort and intensity and time involved to get that job done, then I think diversification is a terrible mistake to any degree.”

That sounds like he is pretty down on diversification and if that is true then how can individuals learn to pick the one or two “winners” that will make them rich without having to pay some “expert” to show them how? Lets take a longer look at the entire quote without the ellipses.

“If you are not a professional investor. If your goal is not to manage money to earn a significantly better return than the world, then I believe in extreme diversification. I believe 98% – 99% who invest should extensively diversify and not trade, so that leads them to an index fund type of decision with very low costs. All they are going to do is own part of America. And they have made a decision that owning a part of America is worthwhile. I don’t quarrel with that at all. That is the way they should approach it unless they want to bring an intensity to the game to make a decision and start evaluating businesses. Once you are in the businesses of evaluating businesses and you decide that you are going to bring the effort and intensity and time involved to get that job done, then I think diversification is a terrible mistake to any degree. I got asked that question the other day at SunTrust. If you really know businesses, you probably shouldn’t own more than six of them.”

Sounds a lot different now doesn’t it? In fact, Buffett’s own investment company Berkshire Hathaway is invested in an extremely diversified manner. They own a lot more than 6 stocks and have spread their risk across other asset classes as well including bonds, government debt, currencies, swaps, options and private equity.

Warren Buffett is not in the business of teaching others how to invest like he does. Off the cuff comments in an interview or Q&A session with a bunch of random MBA students is not likely to be entirely reliable or representative of what he really does as an investment manager.

The business that Buffett is in is investment management. His firm is publicly traded with two classes of stock. You will be able to buy a share of Berkshire Hathaway’s class B stock for less than $100 a share in 2010 after the stock is split. If you really want to invest like Warren Buffett why do anything besides buying stock in his fund?

If you always wanted the ability to share the returns of a billionaire this is your chance and you didn’t even have to buy a book, seminar, newsletter or video to do it. The moral of this story is that with a little research and some thought you can avoid most of the guru’s and their high priced advice and go right to the source.

Learning Markets offers daily articles, videos and investing guides – for free – about everything from investing in stocks and options to trading currencies in the forex market and more. Visit LearningMarkets.com to learn more about investing and to interact with other investors just like you.

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Now available for downloading: a PDF transcript of Becky Quick’s live interview with Warren Buffett on Wednesday, January 20, 2010.

During their one-hour conversation (full video), Buffett discussed the upcoming 50-for-1 split of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B shares, his unhappiness with Kraft’s sweetened deal to acquire Cadbury, and why he thinks Americans are so frustrated with their government.

If you don’t already have Adobe Acrobat Reader software to view the PDF, you can get it at Adobe’s web site.

Current Berkshire stock prices:

Class A: [BRK.A 106650.00 -2200.00 (-2.02%) ]

Class B: [BRK.B 71.163 -1.557 (-2.14%) ]

Kraft Foods: [KFT 28.0405 -0.1995 (-0.71%) ]

Cadbury: [CBY 53.58 -0.25 (-0.46%) ]

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Associated Press, 01.22.10, 06:57 AM EST

LONDON — Shares in Cadbury PLC slipped on Friday on the last full day of trading before a deadline for rival offers to Kraft Food Inc.’s 11.5 billion pound ($19.5 billion) planned takeover – with little sign of action from The Hershey Co.

Hershey ( HSY – news – people ), which had previously stated an interest in the British confectioner, has until 07:00 GMT (02:00 EST) on Monday to make a formal bid for the company.

The Financial Times newspaper said that the Hershey board voted unanimously at a meeting on Wednesday evening against making a rival offer after the Cadbury ( CBY – news – people ) board’s decision to recommend the sweetened Kraft offer.

Cadbury shares were down 0.8 percent at 826.5 pence in midmorning trade on the London Stock Exchange, as analysts downgraded the attraction of the stock because of Hershey’s expected exit from the race and its likely increased exposure to U.S. equity markets.

The shares are currently trading below the Kraft bid of 840 pence per share for the British maker of Dairy Milk chocolates and Dentyne gum, comprising 500 pence cash and 0.1874 new Kraft shares for each Cadbury share.

The combination of Cadbury and Kraft, the maker of Toblerone chocoloate, Velveeta processed cheese and Oreo cookies, would create the world’s biggest confectionary company, replacing Mars Inc.

Analysts have been sceptical that Hershey would be able to top Kraft’s decision to increase its previously hostile bid by 9 percent to win the Cadbury board’s favor.

Hershey, based in the Pennsylvania town of the same name, is much smaller than Cadbury and has been negotiating with banks and the charitable trust that controls its shares over structuring an offer.

As well as trumping Kraft’s offer, Hershey would have to pay a 118 million pound break fee and undergo a potentially lengthy regulatory review in the United States, given the two companies are already partners in international product licenses.

Charles Stanley analyst Jeremy Batstone-Carr said he was downgrading Cadbury from a “reduce” to “sell” in light of Hershey’s likely exit from the race.

Batstone-Carr recommended investors switch to consumer products maker Unilever NV ( UN – news – people ), which is being overhauled by new Chief Executive Paul Polman.

Around 45 percent of Cadbury shareholders are based in Britain, and are “long only,” holding the shares for a reasonable period of time to make profits based on company fundamentals, rather than employing more detailed investment strategies such as leveraged bets, short-selling and technical calls.

“U.K.-based investors are unlikely to want to hold Kraft stock,” said Batstone-Carr. “We believe that as many as half these holders will be unwilling or unable to hold Kraft shares and will be looking for alternative investment destinations here in the U.K.”

Shaw Capital Stockbrokers highlighted the risk associated with the Kraft equity element of the offer as it also downgraded the stock to “sell.”

“Should, for whatever reason, there be a mark-down or correction to U.S. equity capital markets, and so the Kraft share price in particular in the next few weeks and months, until the deal is finalised, the Cadbury investors could yet see a reduction in the London listed share price and the value of the offer,” analysts said in a note.

Kraft, based in Northfield, Ill., now only needs to get the approval of 50 percent of Cadbury’s shareholders, who must vote by Feb. 2, to push ahead with the takeover. While some shareholders had pressed for a higher offer, analysts widely expect the majority to follow the support of the Cadbury board.

Not all Kraft’s own shareholders are happy with the deal, however. Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. ( BRK – news – people ) is Kraft’s largest stockholder, has said the purchase is a mistake. But Buffett, who argued that Kraft is overpaying and using an undervalued stock to do so, said this week he will retain his Kraft stock.

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I love this cartoon. I hope you do too.

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Published in Investing on 22 January 2010

As Berkshire Hathaway shareholders vote to approve a fifty-for-one split in its class-B shares, has been sharing his thoughts with both CNBC and Fox Business.

Cadbury and Kraft

Obviously this is the big story for British investors, and Berkshire Hathaway owns 9.4% of the predator. In a nutshell (pun intended), Buffett doesn’t like it, and thinks the Brits are getting the better side of the deal. Tony Luckett’s article goes into more detail on the chocolate wars.

Having questioned the judgement of Kraft’s chief executive, Irene Rosenfeld, describing her as a “perfectly decent person” could be considered damning with faint praise — running a giant corporation requires much more than just decency. Kraft recently sold a pizza operation for nine times earnings, and is now buying Cadbury (LSE: CBRY) at 16 to 17 times earnings; as Buffett put it: “It’s hard to get rich doing that“.

Banks

Buffett has always had a significant interest in banking and financial companies, and increased his holdings during the crisis, but unsurprisingly he is highly critical of some of the management of banks in general.

Ideally he would like to require CEO’s, and their spouses, to sign up to an agreement whereby they are wiped out financially if their bank has to resort to assistance from the state while they are at the helm, or within two years of leaving office. Directors would be fined five times their average annual compensation. Something like that might indeed help to focus minds.

On the other hand, he is totally opposed to the proposed levy on financial firms, describing it as a ‘guilt tax’, a view not shared by Motley Fool’s Bruce Jackson.

Government

While he is opposed to a banking levy, he heaps praise on both the current and previous administrations for their handling of the credit crisis, which was an ‘economic Pearl Harbour’.

“The key actions of the government were in September and October 2008 … they had to show that they were going to jump in and do whatever it took.“

He reiterates that an independent Fed is “incredibly important”, and says that Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, “did a magnificent job“. In the unlikely event that Bernanke is not reconfirmed for another four-year term, he’d expect to see sharp falls in the market.

The Recovery

Berkshire Hathaway has shed 25,000 of its 240,000 employees, and 6,500 of those were in its carpet business. While Buffett has a famously hands-off approach to management, it was interesting to hear him say that he looks at the incoming orders in the carpet business on a daily basis. Perhaps he views it as a useful early indicator of consumer spending?

Buffett was very bullish on the long-term health of the economy, as evidenced by his purchase of rail company Burlington Northern, but is is careful to point out that “deleveraging is a painful process and it takes a long time“.

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Getty Images Warren Buffett

Both classes of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway marked the first day of trading today for the just-split Class B stocks with their biggest one-day percentage gain since last August.

Both the Class A and Class B stock ended the day at their highest levels since early November, 2008.

The A shares closed today with a gain of 4.5% at $108,850. After three straight days of strong gains, they’re up 11.6 for the holiday-shortened week.

Current price: [BRK.A 108850.00 4650.00 (+4.46%) ]

The Baby Bs finished 4.6% higher today at a post-split price of $72.72. They’ve gained 13.6 percent this week.

Current price: [BRK.B 72.72 3.20 (+4.6%) ]

Volume for the Class B shares hit 14.5 million shares in today’s session. That compares to a 10-day average of 65,100 shares when the stock traded at its pre-split price of over $3000.

Even volume on the unsplit A shares more than doubled to 4.4 thousand from their 10-day average of 2.1 thousand.

Buffett told Fox Business today he would prefer less action:

“We don’t want any day traders. And we get very, very few of them in the end. We want to get the same kind of shareholders that we’ve attracted in the past, we want to get people who look at buying a share of Berkshire … that they intend to hold forever… There’s been a little more action than is ideal today.”

Putting Berkshire stock into double digits for the first time in years makes them more affordable for small investors who weren’t able to handle a four-figure price tag.

In addition, there’s been speculation the Class B split will pave the way for Standard & Poor’s to add Berkshire to its benchmark S&P 500 stock index. If that happens, big index funds that mimic the S&P’s performance would need to purchase the stock. Some buyers now may be trying to anticipate a gain for Berkshire if it does indeed become one of the 500.

S&P passed up a chance to do so tonight, selecting NRG Energy to replace Sun Microsystems in the index.

That’s a bit of good news for Buffett anyway. NRG is up 5 percent to $25.20 in after-hours trading. Berkshire owns 6 million shares of NRG, a 2.3 percent stake. Current price: [NRG 24.00 -0.67 (-2.72%) ]

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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has denied a POSCO press release saying he plans to buy more shares in Korea’s largest steelmaker. POSCO put out the press release on Tuesday saying the “sage of Omaha” is willing to increase his holding from the current four million shares or 4.5 percent.

The press release was put out after POSCO chairman Chung Joon-yang met Buffett at the influential investor’s firm Berkshire Hathaway in Omaha, Nebraska on Tuesday. It led to three straight days of gains on the bourse for POSCO, but shares plunged on the heels of Buffett’s denial.

Asked whether the press release is true, Buffett told business channel CNBC on Thursday, “I said that I like the company a lot. I wished I had bought more when it was a lot cheaper within the past year. It got way down in terms of price. It’s a wonderful company, but I don’t have plans to buy more. If it went down significantly, I might very well buy more. Certainly I have no plans to sell any.”

Asked if that was lost in translation, Buffett answered, “Yes, it was.” POSCO said the misunderstanding was “a matter of nuance” and added it did not think Buffett “has changed his mind.”

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By BOB COX

Posted Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.’s profit fell 13 percent in the fourth quarter, but the company posted its smallest three-month drop in revenue all year as freight shipments began picking up.

The parent company of Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway reported a quarterly profit of $536 million, or $1.55 a share in 2009, compared with $615 million, or $1.78 a share, for the same period of 2008.

The performance reflected modest gains in the U.S. economy, a trend that BNSF Chief Executive Matt Rose said he expects will continue in 2010.

“We have seen some improvement in volumes during the second half of 2009 and expect this gradual improvement to continue,” Rose said in a prepared statement.

BNSF did not hold a conference call with investment analysts or news media because of its pending merger with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

For the full year, BNSF earned a profit of $1.7 billion, or $5.01 per share. That compares with $2.1 billion, or $6.06 a share, in 2008.

Fourth-quarter freight revenue was $3.57 billion, down 16 percent from $4.2 billion in 2008.

The revenue decline partly reflected a $388 million drop in fuel surcharges paid by freight shippers. For all of 2009, BNSF freight revenue declined more than 22 percent to $13.6 billion.

Union Pacific Corp., BNSF’s main competitor in the western states, reported similar results. UP’s profit declined 17 percent to $551 million, and its annual revenue fell 21 percent to $14.1 billion.

Dramatic declines in oil and fuel prices helped railroad profit margins. BNSF’s fuel expenses declined by 33 percent, or $312 million, in the fourth quarter alone. Fuel costs were down 49 percent, or nearly $2.3 billion, for the full year and accounted for two-thirds of the reduction in expenses for the year.

The earnings report could be the last issued by the company. The merger with Berkshire Hathaway is expected to close during the first quarter of 2010. A shareholder vote on the plan will occur in early February.

In November, BNSF announced that its board of directors had agreed to accept Berkshire’s offer of $26.3 billion, or $100 a share in cash and stock, for the 77 percent of the company it didn’t already own.

This week, BNSF filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying it had negotiated an agreement to settle potential class action lawsuits alleging that management had not obtained a fair price from Buffett, Berkshire’s CEO.

The company said in the filing that it had agreed to amend certain disclosures in the merger proposal documents but would not give additional compensation to shareholders to settle the lawsuits. The settlement proposal must still be approved by a Delaware judge overseeing the case.

Many lawsuits challenging the merger were filed within days of it being announced, but Buffett said he would not increase his offer.

The $100-a-share price was a 31 percent premium over the stock market price of BNSF shares the day before the deal was announced.

BNSF spokesman John Ambler said he could not elaborate on either the litigation or the earnings report because of the pending merger vote. “We want to be extra cautious not to prejudice anyone’s votes,” he said.

BNSF reported that it plans to spend $2.4 billion in 2010 on capital improvements, including track repairs and replacement, signal systems, and rail cars and locomotives.

The figure is about $240 million less than in 2009, largely because the company will buy fewer locomotives.

“We remain committed to making the necessary investments to protect and grow the value of our franchise despite an uncertain economic environment,” said Rose, the CEO.

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By Michael Tsang and Nikolaj Gammeltoft

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — Symetra Financial Corp., owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., sold shares at the low end for its initial public offering as investors won concessions from three other companies in the first U.S. IPOs of 2010.

Symetra, the Bellevue, Washington-based insurer, raised $365 million selling 30.4 million shares at $12 each yesterday, after asking for as much as $14 apiece. Cellu Tissue Holdings Inc. cut its price by 24 percent and Chesapeake Lodging Trust raised 40 percent less than it sought when investors rejected its IPO last month, while Terreno Realty Corp. pushed back its offer until next week after reducing its deal size by a third.

The first offerings of 2010 show that buyers are still demanding better terms after six deals were shelved in November and December. While U.S. companies are projected to raise three times as much money from IPOs this year compared with 2009, almost 40 percent of the sales in the past six months left investors with losses, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“This reflects that the U.S. IPO market is very selective right now,” said Josef Schuster, the Chicago-based founder of IPOX Capital Management LLC and manager of the Direxion Long/Short Global IPO Fund, which will start in March. “Investors are evaluating the issues on a deal-to-deal basis, the higher quality names and bigger brands do better but no one is willing to buy whatever comes out.”

American companies may raise as much as $50 billion through initial offers this year, after deals recovered during the biggest stock-market rally since the Great Depression, estimates from London-based Barclays Plc and Bloomberg show.

White House, China

A 65 percent rebound in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index from its low in March also prompted buyout firms to use IPOs to return cash to investors after fundraising shrank to a six-year low, helping turn the end of 2009 into the busiest period for new sales in almost two years. The S&P 500 tumbled 1.9 percent yesterday, the most since October, as the White House proposed to reduce risk-taking at banks and speculation grew that China will take more steps to slow economic growth.

Symetra will start trading today on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SYA. The company, 53 percent owned by Berkshire and White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd. before the sale, originally offered 27 million shares at $12 to $14 each in the first IPO from a U.S. life insurer since 2004, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show.

While Symetra sold 3.4 million more shares in the offering than it planned, the IPO price of $12 indicates some buyers weren’t willing to pay up to invest alongside Buffett, the world’s second-richest man.

Book Value

Based on the original terms, the midpoint price of $13 would have valued Symetra at about 85 cents for each dollar of net assets, a 21 percent premium to the median book value for 24 U.S. life and health insurers, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Symetra, which sells group medical insurance that covers employees’ prescriptions and doctor visits, as well as annuities and life insurance, sold a 27 percent stake in the IPO, assuming a total of 113.43 million outstanding shares. The company will receive 68 percent of the proceeds before expenses, with selling shareholders, which include New York-based private-equity firm J.C. Flowers & Co. and Bruce Berkowitz’s Fairholme Capital Management LLC in Miami, getting the rest.

Berkshire of Omaha, Nebraska, and Hanover, New Hampshire- based White Mountains kept their stakes.

Bank of America Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina, New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Plc of London were the lead underwriters for Symetra’s sale. For legal counsel, Symetra turned to Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, which was led by William J. Whelan III.

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By Dunstan Prial

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Warren Buffett said Thursday that one way to ensure that banks don’t take on too much risk is to penalize chief executives whose banks get into trouble.

In an exclusive interview with Fox Business Network’s Liz Claman, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) said he’d need to know more about the significant banking reforms proposed earlier in the day by the Obama administration before commenting on their potential impact. The reforms propose restrictions on the size of big U.S. banks and the amount of risk they can take on.

The so-called Oracle of Omaha said regulation is an important part of any effective financial system. In addition, Buffett said there likely will always be financial institutions “too big to fail.” However, he said it’s inherently difficult for regulators to police risk.

What needs to change is the incentives for bank leaders, Buffett said. CEOs of banks that need to go to the government for bailouts should be “destroyed financially,” he said.

Buffett, whose firm invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs (GS: 161.4161, -6.4639, -3.85%) last year, said the Obama administration’s proposal would not prompt him to sell any of those shares.

“I’m not tempted at all” to sell Goldman stock, he said. “I would not be bearish on Goldman Sachs at all.”

Buffett added that he continues to support the Obama administration, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

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By Greg Farrell in New York and Jenny Wiggins in London

Published: January 21 2010 19:10 | Last updated: January 21 2010 19:10

Hershey has decided not to mount a bid for Cadbury, abandoning its hope of using the British confectioner as a path to global expansion and conceding that Kraft’s recommended bid of 840 pence per share, plus a 10 pence dividend, is too high for it to top.

The decision follows a unanimous vote by Hershey’s board of directors late on Wednesday against a competing offer, according to a person briefed on the matter.

While Kraft’s bid, announced on Tuesday, was widely expected to carry the day with Cadbury – in spite of complaints in British government circles about the American takeover of a beloved English brand – the threat of a competing bid from Hershey remained, and the Pennsylvania company had until next Monday to tender its own offer under UK takeover rules.

The decision by the board of Hershey Food ends four months of debate within the company and at the charitable trust that controls the majority of its voting shares.

Since September, when Kraft’s original takeover bid for Cadbury was rebuffed by the UK company as “derisory”, members of the Hershey trust have supported a bid for Cadbury.

Over several months, Hershey’s board came to embrace the idea of a bid, which had been approved just last week. However, the recommended offer by Kraft increased Hershey’s difficulties in putting together a counter-bid.

As well as having to trump Kraft’s offer, Hershey would have had to pay a £118m break fee and go through a long regulatory process in the US that would have delayed the completion of any deal.

A Hershey offer would also have probably included a greater proportion of stock than Kraft’s offer, which ended up being 60 per cent cash.

By offering a large chunk of cash, Kraft has eliminated the need for a shareholder vote – indeed Kraft’s largest shareholder, Warren Buffett, has said that he would not approve the deal if he were given the opportunity to vote.

Kraft now only needs to get the approval of 50 per cent of Cadbury’s shareholders, who must vote by February 2, to succeed.

Although some Cadbury shareholders have expressed disappointment that the company’s board did not get a higher price, most are expected to approve the deal.

Italy’s Ferrero is also expected to withdraw formally as a counter-bidder before a UK Takeover Panel deadline for counter-offers on Monday.

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By Jamie McGee

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama’s proposals to regulate banks should include a requirement that chief executive officers and their spouses forfeit their assets when companies fail, billionaire Warren Buffett said on the Fox Business Network today.

“There ought to be a huge downside,” said Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is the largest shareholder in Wells Fargo & Co. “Make it so that the CEO of an institution that fails, or goes to the government and needs help, really gets destroyed himself financially. Why should he come out any better than somebody that gets laid off as an auto worker at General Motors?”

Buffett, who collects a $100,000 salary as Omaha, Nebraska- based Berkshire’s leader, said CEOs should act as “chief risk officer.” He has criticized bankers for failing to realize that housing prices could fall.

Obama today introduced a plan that he said would reduce risk-taking by financial institutions. The proposal is part of an effort to overhaul financial regulations and would specifically prohibit banks from running proprietary trading operations or investing in hedge funds and private equity funds. Banks conduct proprietary trading for their own benefit, not for that of their clients.

Buffett said he hadn’t had an opportunity to review the administration’s proposal. He supported Obama’s campaign for president.

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By: The Associated Press | 21 Jan 2010 | 09:22 AM ET

OMAHA, Neb. – Peter Eischeid has long had his nose pressed to the glass of billionaire Warren Buffett’s investment empire, yearning to be among those with the means to buy their way in.

No more. Thanks to a stock split approved Wednesday, Eischeid and other small investors plan to snatch up lower-tier Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shares that will sell for just $69 and change. That’s down from about $3,500 that each Class B share commanded before.

“I avoided that conglomerate mainly because of the entry prices of the shares,” said Eischeid, 34, of Salt Lake City. “I know there are a lot of people that will definitely be intrigued by that lower share price.”

There will indeed, said Andy Kilpatrick, a stockbroker and author of a two-volume tome on Buffett’s life and business.

“It now makes it available to a child who cuts grass for spending money,” Kilpatrick said. “There’s nobody who can’t find $66. The last time Berkshire stock was at $66 was in 1971.”

Buffett has built his reputation as a savvy investor who spots quality businesses selling cheaply and either buys the stock or the whole company. Omaha-based Berkshire has investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., and owns more than 60 subsidiaries, including clothing, furniture and jewelry companies. Its insurance and utility businesses typically account for more than half of its revenue.

The company’s prized Class A shares, which carry more voting rights and are not being split, are the nation’s most expensive stock at around $100,000 each. The Class B shares, dubbed “Baby Berkshires,” are splitting 50-for-1 as a way to facilitate the company’s plan to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

Among investors drawn by the lower price is Adam Bray-Ali, a self-described small investor from Los Angeles, who bought two shares of the Class B stock for just under $3,300 each two days before the split, and planned to buy another 50 or so afterward. By the end of Thursday, he plans to have about 150 shares.

But there’s more at play than the stock’s new affordability.

“I can go to the shareholder meeting this year,” the 35-year-old Bray-Ali said.

Berkshire’s annual meeting is the mecca of shareholder events, routinely drawing more than 30,000 to Omaha for the three-day affair that has an almost carnival-like atmosphere. The event includes a shareholder reception on the eve of the meeting, various parties and a six-hour question-and-answer session with Buffett, who tosses out financial observances in terms even the most uninitiated investor can follow.

“I would say that for some young investor … if you want to learn about investments, then the annual meeting is the place to go,” Kilpatrick said.

That’s a draw for University of Tennessee senior Nick Vantrease. The 21-year-old, who is president of the school’s Financial Management Association, said he will consider buying Berkshire stock once he graduates in May and starts working. He expects the split to be a key topic at Buffett’s scheduled meeting with college business students next month.

“It’ll be interesting to hear what he has to say about it,” said Vantrease. “It definitely makes the stock more affordable.”

Terry Porter of Kansas City, Mo., who has held Class B shares for years, believes it’s not just young investors who can take advantage of the lower entry price.

“I have a lot of older people ask me what they should invest in. They don’t want to be ripped off,” said the 60-year-old retiree. “I’d be the first to recommend Buffett.”

Opinion is split on the effect the move will have on the stock’s direction. Plenty believe it will help the Class B price rise, especially if Berkshire’s increased liquidity lands the stock in the S&P 500.

Buffett, long opposed to stock splits, said he enjoys using stock for the railroad deal “about as much as preparing for a colonoscopy.” While the man known as the Oracle of Omaha has nonetheless supported the move, some professionals don’t see it as a buying opportunity.

“I’m a follower and fan of Warren Buffett, but no, I am not going to buy into Berkshire Hathaway for myself or my clients,” said Mark Pearson, president and CEO of Anchor Capital Management in Minneapolis. “I firmly believe there is greater value in other companies in the market.”

___

On the Net:

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com

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Investors appear to like Berkshire Hathaway stock in the $60s and even the $70s more than they liked it at roughly $3500 a share.

Berkshire shareholders approved a 50-for-1 stock split of Berkshire’s Class B shares yesterday. Trading began today.

The lower price is seen as an opening for small investors who couldn’t afford the old four-figure price tag. (The Associated Press quotes a number of eager buyers in a piece this morning.)

After the first thirty minutes, the Baby Bs are up 4.8 percent to $72.88 from the split-adjusted close of $69.50 ($3475 per share pre-split.)

That puts them on track for their highest close since November, 2008.

Current price: [BRK.B 71.99 2.47 (+3.55%) ]

At yesterday’s meeting, Warren Buffett told shareholders that the increased trading volume and liquidity for the Class B shares after the split could make it the key driver of Berkshire’s market value. “The B may be the tail that wags the dog now.”

That may be the case today. Berkshire’s Class A shares are also up almost 5 percent as of 10a ET.

Current price: [BRK.A 107900.00 3700.00 (+3.55%) ]

There also appears to be another factor at work here.

Ravi Nagarajan on the Rational Walk is giving the credit for today’s rally to Buffett’s comment yesterday to Bloomberg that Berkshire’s stock at the “low end” of its valuation.

Berkshire closed just over 4 percent higher in yesterday’s trading.

The Class A shares picked up 2.6 percent on Tuesday. For the week so far, it is up over 10 percent.

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Everybody seems to have made a big deal of the fact Wells Fargo’s (NYSE:WFC) fourth-quarter results far exceeded analysts’ expectations. But I’m not that convinced by them, as they generate some questions that will need to be answered before I’m persuaded it was from operational excellence. We’ll get into that a little later in the article. First the results.

What caused a big stir was the profits generated in the quarter of $2.82 billion, which came to 8 cents a share. Analysts were looking for a loss of 1 cent a share, making it look like a blockbuster performance for the quarter for Wells Fargo. Last year during the same period the company lost $2.55 billion or 79 cents a share.

Revenue also came in at record levels, with the company recording $22.7 billion, and annualized increase of 4 percent over the previous quarter.

That isn’t that impressive though, as it for the most part came from the acquisition of Wachovia and not from organic growth. For the year Wells had a net profit of $7.99 billion on $88.7 billion in revenue; also a record, but also related to the Wachovia acquisition.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t take into account Wachovia’s performance, as it’s now part of Wells Fargo, just at this stage it is meaningless as far as the numbers go because it has nothing to do with performance but simply the additional size of Wachovia being added to Wells Fargo. Next year it’ll have more meaning because the performance of the company itself will be measured and not simply the one-time growth enjoyed from adding its numbers to Wells Fargo’s numbers.

Now the fourth-largest bank in America, the company said they now hold $1.2 trillion in assets as of the end of 2009.

So other than acquiring Wachovia, what was the real performance of Wells Fargo in the fourth quarter?

The news actually wasn’t that good in their core business, as the number of bad loans on their books continue to increase, growing by 6 percent from the third quarter, now standing at $5.4 billion. Those loans becoming uncollectible grew by close to 18 percent from the third quarter to a huge $27.6 billion. Much of that will get worse as the year goes on, as commercial loans continue to default at a huge rate for the company, and is expected to peak in the latter part of 2010 for all the banks with large exposure in that sector.

Concerning the mortgage business in general, they fell by almost 30 percent in the U.S. in the fourth quarter from the quarter before, which consequently had a detrimental effect on the number of home loans offered by Wells Fargo during that time. For those that did refinance or took out a mortgage, the bank did attach higher fees to generate more revenue.

One strange part of Wells Fargo’s revenue continues to be the income it is garnering from hedging, which is unusual in the industry to say the least, and has now become a factor in the last couple of quarters. This quarter they had gains of $2.1 billion, while last quarter it stood at $1.5 billion. The hedging is said to be part of the mortgage-servicing unit. This could come under more scrutiny because it’s highly unusual for these types of gains to come about from the mortgage-servicing unit of a company.

Some seemingly legitimate good news from the company says the performance of its option-ARM mortgages are stronger than anticipated, and won’t cost the company as much as originally believed.

Other good news for the company which is measurable is on average the checking and savings deposits for the company grew to $661 billion in the fourth quarter, a surge of 20 percent from quarter three.

I’m actually a little concerned about Wells Fargo, and have been for some time. They’ve largely been ignored by the mainstream media as far as negative reporting, while most of the other major banks have been getting hit hard by them. There’s a possibility of the Warren Buffett factor there, but after he hit out against the Obama tax on the banks, we’ll see if that honeymoon continues to be bliss or not.

What is worrisome is if we’re getting an accurate picture of the company, as their core business seems to be devasted, yet reports are acting like it’s the strength of the company going forward. Somewhere there’s a disconnect, and whenever that happens, red flags should be raised.

Add to that the fact that much of their operations are in California, and it’s hard to believe they’re acting like they’ve turned the corner on mortgage defaults.

The Wells Fargo story is just sounding too good to me, and I think when we see how it plays out in 2010 that the underlying fundamentals of the company may not be as strong as being portrayed. I’m more cautious with them than any other large bank out there at this time.

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commentary by: David Russell

Option volume exploded in Berkshire Hathaway today after the company split its shares 50 for 1, which increased liquidity in Warren Buffett’s insurance and utility conglomerate.

Some 13,700 options contracts changed hands on the company’s B-shares today, more than 90 times greater than the average. The action was tilted toward the bulls, with heavy call buying and most put activity resulting from sales.

New money streamed into the February 76 calls, which changed hands 2,284 times for $0.50 to $1.15, and into the February 72 calls, which mostly traded for $2 to $2.50. Existing contracts were adjusted to reflect the lower stock price after the split.

BRK-B reached a new 52-week high of $73.43 before pulling back to $71.39 in morning trading, still up 2.69 percent on the day. The company split the shares as part of its purchase of railroad Burlington Northern in early November just days before it last reported earnings.

The February 70 puts were the most active option contract. Investors sold about 2,700 contracts, generating as much as $1.35 of premium. The strategy reflects confidence that BRK-B will hold the $70 level. Overall in the name today, calls account for 71 percent of the options activity.

(Chart courtesy of tradeMONSTER)

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Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:46am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Warren Buffett’s move to split Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) Class B shares will tempt smaller investors to buy into the once high-priced stock and could lead to its eventual inclusion in the S&P 500 index.

Shareholders of Berkshire, the Omaha, Nebraska-based insurance and investment company, approved on Wednesday a 50-for-1 split of Class B shares (BRKb.N) in connection with the conglomerate’s takeover of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp (BNI.N) at a special meeting in Omaha.

The split pares the partial shares Berkshire issues to BNSF investors. Buffett said at the meeting that the split was needed to make the transaction easier for small investors.

Investment managers and analysts expect the move will boost demand for the B shares, which closed New York Stock Exchange trade at $3,476, up more than 4 percent after the vote. With the split, each share would be worth about $69.

“This will definitely increase demand. The high share price left out many people from getting involved in something they otherwise would very much like to have,” said Patrick Watson, an analyst at Capital Cities Asset Management in Austin, Texas.

Advisers said the split would boost liquidity and could raise the chances that Berkshire may be included in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index .SPX, which could further increase demand for the stock.

“It will be a good situation if it gets into the S&P 500, since there is all that built-in buying with different index funds,” said Alan Lancz, head of Alan B. Lancz & Associates Inc., an investment advisory firm in Toledo, Ohio.

Berkshire is the largest U.S.-based company by market value not included in the S&P 500 because the highly priced shares traded on thin volume. Before the split, the Class B shares traded at six times the price of Google, the highest priced stock in the S&P 500 at $580.41 a share.

One tripping point for Berkshire’s inclusion in the index is its first quarter loss last year, said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s Indices in New York. S&P looks for four straight quarters of profitability when choosing stocks to include in the index.

“There are other criteria such as leverage and balance sheet that could make up for that one-time item. And let’s face it, the last year has not been the best for earnings for anyone,” said Silverblatt, though he gave no indication that Berkshire was being considered for inclusion in the index.

VERY UN-BUFFETT

Buffett, 79, had never split Berkshire’s stock. One of the world’s most respected investors, Buffett reasoned in the past that splits could attract speculators rather than the long-term investors he prefers.

Buffett controls 31.6 percent of the voting power of Berkshire stock and advisers said it was surprising that the so-called “Oracle of Omaha” would dilute the value of his pricey shares.

“Buffet has never been someone to split the stock. But when they launched the B shares, it was a de facto split, so it is really moot,” said Richard Steinberg, of Steinberg Global Asset Management Ltd in Boca Raton, Florida, who manages about $470 million, including over $4 million in Berkshire shares.

Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, said the “un-Buffett-like” split followed the move to buy BNSF at a premium — a move Saut called equally out of character for an investor known for exemplifying the creed of buying low.

“I think he was just sitting on too much cash. There is talk he will pass the torch and I think he was worried the heir apparent could invest in the wrong thing,” Saut said.

While most advisers thought the split would be a boost for the stock, others thought the move could attract the kind of investors that Buffett had long worried about.

“History shows that stocks that are split to achieve a lower price are degraded,” said Frank Pavilonis, senior market strategist at Lind-Waldock, a retail brokerage firm, in Chicago.

Increased demand will likely lead to more analysts at Wall Street firms and other major brokerages to cover Berkshire, which has received little attention from research analysts. The issuance of “buy” ratings could help reinforce demand, advisers said.

“Some people feel more comfortable when they see things in writing and can get reports from several different firms,” said Lancz.

(Additional reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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By Bryan Keogh and John Detrixhe

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — Kraft Foods Inc. bonds are rallying as debt investors reject Warren Buffett’s assertion that the company’s 11.9 billion-pound ($19.3 billion) takeover of Cadbury Plc is a mistake.

Kraft’s 6.875 percent notes due in 2039 climbed to a three- month high of 108.7 cents on the dollar yesterday, according to Trace data. The Northfield, Illinois-based food and beverage company’s bonds have returned 2.02 percent including reinvested interest this month, compared with 1.72 percent for an index of similar debt and 1.71 percent for the global corporate bond market, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data.

While Buffett said Kraft is overpaying for Cadbury by using undervalued stock to fund part of the deal, bond investors are betting the acquisition won’t jeopardize its investment-grade credit rating. Shares of Kraft have risen 2 percent since early September, just before the offer was announced.

“It’s not as bad on the bondholders as it is on the equity guys,” said Mirko Mikelic, a money manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he helps oversee $14 billion of fixed-income assets. “People in the bond market don’t think they’re going to want to jeopardize their BBB rating.”

Elsewhere in credit markets, the extra yield investors demand to own corporate bonds globally instead of Treasuries is holding at about the lowest since December 2007 at 1.61 percentage points. Yields fell to 4.09 percent on average yesterday from 4.12 percent on Jan. 19. Credit-default swaps show investors are growing more concerned about the risk of companies failing to pay their debt.

Kraft Bonds Rise

Some Kraft bonds rose yesterday even after Fitch Ratings cut its default ranking to BBB- from BBB, citing the “the anticipated increase in financial leverage of the combined companies.” Kraft, the maker of Oreo cookies and Tang powdered drinks, said the deal will result in at least $675 million in annual savings and give it leading positions in India, Brazil and Mexico.

Kraft’s 6.875 percent bonds initially dropped after the Cadbury bid was first announced in September, falling to 107.2 cents on the dollar from a high of 114.9 cents, Trace data show. The spread, which widened to 204 basis points, narrowed to 167 basis points yesterday, the lowest since the deal was proposed.

“It’s obviously a good company to a bond investor in the sense that it’s a steady business,” said Jason Brady, a managing director at Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Thornburg Investment Management, which oversees about $55 billion, including Kraft bonds. “When you start levering up to do transformative things, I think bond investors start to get kind of nervous.”

Biggest Candy Maker

The takeover creates a company with about $50 billion in annual sales, displacing Mars Inc. as the world’s biggest candy maker, according to Euromonitor data. Kraft fell 63 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $28.78 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

“I think this deal was a mistake,” Buffett said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Kraft was very undervalued before. I feel it’s less undervalued after doing this deal.”

Kraft will likely keep its investment-grade ratings, Moody’s Investors Service said. Bonds rated below Baa3 by Moody’s and BBB- by Standard & Poor’s and Fitch are considered below investment grade. The company will “no doubt” sell bonds in the U.S. and Europe to help finance the purchase, Gary Jenkins, head of credit strategy at Evolution Securities Ltd. in London, said yesterday in a note to clients.

Credit-default swaps on the Markit CDX North America Investment-Grade Index Series 13, which is linked to 125 companies and used to speculate on creditworthiness or to hedge against losses, increased 0.5 basis point to 85 basis points yesterday, according to broker Phoenix Partners Group. A rise in the index signals a decline in investor confidence.

Vanguard Issue

Vanguard Health Systems Inc. plans to sell $1 billion of eight-year notes as soon as today to yield 8 percent to 8.25 percent, according to a person familiar with the offering, who declined to be identified because terms aren’t set.

Swiss Re’s forecast for increasing sales of bonds that pay when catastrophes occur matches that of larger German rival Munich Re, which earlier this month said issuance will climb to $5 billion in 2010 from about $3.5 billion last year. About $5 billion of notes expire this year, Swiss Re said.

Swiss Re, the lead manager on more than half the 2009 issues, said the market may almost triple over the next five years as demand for coverage increases and the securities replace some traditional reinsurance.

“The pipeline for new cat bonds is very active and the momentum of 2009 will surely continue,” Martin Bisping, head of non-life risk transformation at the Zurich-based reinsurer, said in an interview. “We expect the market to broaden.”

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January 21, 2010, 01:23 AM EST

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Warren Buffett is helping two of the world’s most successful investors increase their profits by forgoing instant earnings for himself in the first initial public offering of a U.S. life insurer since 2004.

Symetra Financial Corp., 53 percent owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd., is raising $378 million today, selling shares at $12 to $14 each. The IPO values the Bellevue, Washington-based company at about 85 cents for each dollar of net assets, a 21 percent premium to the median book value for 24 U.S. life and health insurers.

The premium will boost proceeds for J. Christopher Flowers and Bruce Berkowitz by $9 million to $51 million, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bloomberg data. IPOs by private-equity investors helped turn the end of 2009 into the busiest period for new sales in almost two years and six deals were pulled in November and December.

“The fact that Buffett is holding on will help the funds get cash because it will make the deal more likely to get done,” enriching Flowers and Berkowitz, according to Nick Einhorn, an analyst at Greenwich, Connecticut-based Renaissance Capital LLC, which has followed IPOs since 1991.

The offering, along with sales by Terreno Realty Corp., Cellu Tissue Holdings Inc. and Chesapeake Lodging Trust, are the first U.S. deals of 2010 and make today the busiest day for IPOs since Sept. 23. American companies may raise as much as $50 billion through initial offers this year, more than triple the amount in 2009, when deals recovered during the biggest stock- market rally since the Great Depression, estimates from London- based Barclays Plc and Bloomberg show.

Symetra Stake

Symetra, which sells group medical insurance that covers employees’ prescriptions and doctor visits, plans to offer a stake of about 25 percent. The company will receive 64 percent of the proceeds before expenses, with selling shareholders getting the rest.

J.C. Flowers & Co., the New York-based private-equity firm founded by Flowers, 52, will raise $28 million selling all of its 2.175 million shares, based on the midpoint price of $13, a Jan. 15 filing with the SEC showed.

Flowers was part of a group that bought Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan Ltd. for about $1.1 billion in March 2000 in the first acquisition of a Japanese bank by overseas investors, after the company was nationalized in 1998. The $2.2 billion IPO of the lender, which was renamed Shinsei Bank Ltd. in 2004, and a $2.7 billion share sale a year later contributed to profits of as much as $7 billion for investors.

Berkowitz Profits

Berkowitz, 51, will receive $23 million as his Miami-based Fairholme Capital Management LLC, which runs the $11.2 billion Fairholme Fund, sells 1.74 million shares.

Fairholme Fund returned an average of 13 percent over the past 10 years, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell by an annual 1 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg show. He was named manager of the past decade in the U.S. stock fund category by Chicago-based Morningstar Inc.

Flowers didn’t respond to telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment. Berkowitz, who is also a director at Hanover, New Hampshire-based White Mountains, declined to comment, according to Hedda Nadler-Hurvich, a spokeswoman for Fairholme.

The S&P 500’s 68 percent rebound from a 12-year low in March has prompted leveraged-buyout firms to use IPOs to return cash to investors after fundraising shrank to a six-year low. Money raised by private-equity funds worldwide tumbled 78 percent from a year earlier to $35 billion last quarter, according to London-based researcher Preqin Ltd.

Higher Valuations

Symetra’s IPO will pay Flowers and Berkowitz more than the median valuation for U.S. life and health insurers. At $13 a share, Symetra would have a market capitalization of $1.43 billion, based on its 110 million outstanding shares after the offering.

That’s 0.85 times Symetra’s shareholder equity of $1.69 billion at Sept. 30, based on data compiled by Marina del Rey, California-based IPODesktop.com and Bloomberg. The median for U.S. life and health insurers is 0.70 times book value, or assets minus liabilities, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Symetra also estimated it would have so-called tangible book value, a measure of shareholder equity that excludes assets that can’t be sold in liquidation, of $12.42 per share after the offering. At the midpoint price, the company would be valued at 1.05 times tangible book value, compared to the median of 0.98 times, Bloomberg data show.

Shelved Plans

Symetra, formed after a group led by Berkshire and White Mountains paid $1.41 billion for Safeco Corp.’s life insurance unit in 2004, shelved a $790 million IPO in November 2007 as credit markets froze. Back then, Buffett, Flowers and Berkowitz all anticipated selling 37 percent of their holdings. Flowers and Berkowitz planned to retain stakes of 1.5 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively.

Now, Flowers and Berkowitz are benefiting because Buffett will remain Symetra’s largest shareholder, said Jean-Luc Nouzille, founder of Bristlecone Value Partners LLC.

Buffett, 79, built Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire over four decades from a failing maker of men’s suit linings into a $162 billion company through stock picks and takeovers. He didn’t return a message left with his assistant, Carrie Kizer.

“As an investor I wouldn’t go into an IPO with Buffett selling on the other side, especially not in the insurance industry where he is very knowledgeable,” said Los Angeles- based Nouzille, who owns Berkshire shares. “It would be self- defeating for the IPO and its valuation if he had sold.”

Prudential Financial

Symetra is relatively cheap compared with some larger competitors. The company trades at a discount of 17 percent to Newark, New Jersey-based Prudential Financial Inc., the second- biggest U.S. life insurer, which is valued at $1.02 per dollar of its net assets.

Cellu Tissue, the Alpharetta, Georgia-based maker of paper products, plans to raise $132.6 million. Terreno Realty, the San Francisco-based company that acquires industrial real estate in coastal markets, will sell $300 million of shares. Chesapeake Lodging plans to raise $150 million after postponing its IPO last month. The Fairfield, New Jersey-based company formed to buy hotel properties has cut the size of its sale to 7.5 million shares from 12.5 million.

IPOs have increased in the past four months from the slowest pace on record after the failure of New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. froze credit markets.

The revival in deals hasn’t coincided with bigger returns for investors. Almost 40 percent of U.S. IPOs in the second half of 2009 fell, while companies from Old Greenwich, Connecticut- based Ellington Financial LLC to National Beef Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri, pulled their sales, Bloomberg data show.

–With assistance from Damiano Sasso in New York. Editors: Daniel Hauck, Chris Nagi.

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January 21, 2010 1:54am

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Back to Irene Rosenfeld, who despite her degree in psychology, appears to have upset an awful lot of people with Kraft’s £11.6bn takeover of Cadbury.

Having made herself unpopular in the UK by acquiring the maker of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and the Curly Wurly, she has alienated Warren Buffett, her biggest shareholder, who regards it as “a bad deal”.

When pressed in a CNBC interview about his views on her, he damned her with faint praise:

“I think Irene has done a good job in operations. I like Irene. I mean, she’s been straightforward with me. We just disagree. She thinks it’s a good deal. I think it’s a bad deal. I think she’s a decent person. She could be a trustee under my will. I just don’t want her making this particular deal.”

Ms Rosenfeld has put herself far out on a limb – Mr Buffett’s objections extend not only to the price she paid but her sale of “a very fine pizza business” to Nestle to raise money.

His calculation of the lack of value for Kraft in the deal is worth reading in full because it gives a good idea of how a true value investor thinks.

“Now they mentioned paying 13 times Ebitda for Cadbury, but they’re paying more than that. For one thing, Ebitda is not the same as earnings. Depreciation is a very real expense. But on top of that, they’ve got a billion-three they’re going to spend of various rearrangements of Cadbury. They’ve got 390 million dollars of deal expenses. They are using their own stock, 260 million shares or something like that, that their own directors say is significantly undervalued. And when they calculate that 13, they’re calculating Kraft at market price, not at what their own directors think the stock is worth. So, the actual multiple, if you look at the value of the Kraft stock, is more like 16 or 17 and they sold earnings at nine times. So, it’s hard to get rich doing that. And I’ve got a lot of doubts about the deal.”

Ouch.

As Mr Buffett says, he is not getting a chance to vote on the deal as a Kraft shareholder, but I cannot think this is the last Ms Rosenfeld will hear of it.

Determination is a good quality, but ignoring the world’s most venerable shareholder is not what I would call wise career tactics.

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Recommended Amazon Reading

	The Tao of Warren Buffett: Warren Buffett’s Words of Wisdom: Quotations and Interpretations to Help Guide You to Billionaire Wealth and Enlightened Business Management by Mary Buffett Buy new: $15.61 / Used from: $5.84 Usually ships in 24 hours
	Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha by Richard J. Connors Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $12.40 Usually ships in 24 hours