{"id":311478,"date":"2010-02-12T00:24:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T05:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3087194156628161158.post-8086135791697401527"},"modified":"2010-02-12T00:34:51","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T05:34:51","slug":"bloomberg-buffett-covers-dinner-tab-for-fund-manager-who-shared-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/311478","title":{"rendered":"BLOOMBERG: Buffett Covers Dinner Tab for Fund Manager Who Shared Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Tom Cahill<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) — It\u2019s usually the investor who pays to share a meal with Warren Buffett<\/a>. Not so for hedge-fund manager Cara Goldenberg<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The 29-year-old New Yorker sent her stock research to the 79-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.<\/a> in November with a note saying she\u2019d heard he likes to spend the Thanksgiving weekend scouring for investment ideas. Buffett was intrigued enough to invite her and her business partner, Alex Duran<\/a>, to his headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, for a chat and dinner, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. <\/p>\n

Sharing research got Goldenberg an audience for which some have gladly paid hard cash. A steakhouse lunch with Buffett, the second-richest American after Microsoft Corp.\u2019s Bill Gates, raised $1.68 million in a June auction for a San Francisco charity. The winning bid in 2008 was $2.1 million, the highest since Buffett began the annual lunches in 2000. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe hit the jackpot,\u201d said Frank Betz<\/a>, partner at Warren, New Jersey-based Carret Zane Capital Management LLC, who has invested with Berkshire Hathaway for more than two decades. \u201cIt\u2019s praise from Caesar, of course.\u201d <\/p>\n

Goldenberg, co-founder of 18-month-old New York-based Permian Investment Partners LP, and Buffett declined to comment. The fund manager\u2019s profile on social-networking site FaceBook features a picture of her holding a grinning Buffett\u2019s wallet. <\/p>\n

Goldenberg got her undergraduate degree in chemistry in 2002 from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Her first job out of college was working as a private-equity analyst at New York-based investment bank Morgan Stanley. <\/p>\n

Highbridge, Brahman <\/p>\n

She jumped to Highbridge Capital Management LLC, the hedge- fund firm owned by JPMorgan Chase & Co., in 2003, and to Brahman Capital Corp., also in New York, a year later. She became that firm\u2019s youngest partner, and oversaw a $2 billion European equity portfolio<\/a>. She and two former Brahman colleagues started Permian with about $65 million in assets in August 2008 and it now manages about $100 million. <\/p>\n

Permian, which is named for the geologic period that ran from about 290 million to 250 million years ago, focuses on what it deems undervalued companies, mostly in Western Europe. The research she sent to Buffett included the rationale behind the top 10 stocks in her portfolio, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they were told the information in confidence. <\/p>\n

Goldenberg declined to discuss her investment returns or the stock ideas she shared with Buffett. <\/p>\n

Buffett\u2019s Investing Roots <\/p>\n

Buffett favors stocks of companies that he believes have long-term advantages over competitors, and he has become the largest investor in Coca-Cola Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and American Express Co. <\/p>\n

He has turned Berkshire from a maker of suit-linings into a conglomerate<\/a> with a market value of more than $170 billion and businesses ranging from insurance to ice cream. His home-spun wisdom and financial success has turned the company\u2019s annual meeting into a multiday pilgrimage, with a record 35,000 attending last May. <\/p>\n

Buffett\u2019s first solo investing venture was a hedge fund. <\/p>\n

In May 1956, at 25, he started Buffett Associates Ltd. with friends and family as investors, according to \u201cThe Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life,\u201d<\/a> by Alice Schroeder<\/a>. That fund was rolled into a separate hedge fund called Buffett Partnership Ltd., which was dissolved in 1970, according to a Fortune article<\/a> from January of that year by Carol Loomis<\/a> titled \u201cHard Times Come to the Hedge Funds.\u201d He\u2019s led Berkshire since 1970. <\/p>\n

Buffett has said he invests based on the principle of being fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. He says his ideal investment horizon is \u201cforever.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2018Good Guys\u2019 <\/p>\n

One manager who received accolades from Buffett was Walter Schloss<\/a>, now 93, who like Buffett once worked for the late Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, before starting his own firm in 1955. Buffett, in Berkshire\u2019s 2006 letter to shareholders, called Schloss \u201cone of the good guys on Wall Street,\u201d adding that he and his son Edwin produced returns that \u201cdramatically surpassed\u201d those of the Standard & Poor\u2019s 500 Index. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely got calls after that,\u201d Edwin Schloss<\/a> said in an interview. \u201cOver the years, because Warren was enthusiastic about Walter and the approach we used, we did pick up a number of clients.\u201d <\/p>\n

The father and son team had closed their investment partnership in 2002 — several years before Buffett\u2019s letter — having decided that stock valuations had gotten too high. The partnership, Walter and Edwin Schloss Associates LLP, generated average annual returns exceeding 18 percent during its 47 years of existence, Edwin said in the interview. <\/p>\n

Piles of Mail <\/p>\n

Some who have worked with Buffett have also started their own investing ventures. Ian Jacobs, who worked at Berkshire from 2003 to 2009 on investment research and other projects, last March started 402 Fund LP, an Omaha-based fund that focuses on U.S. equity investments. Jacobs declined to provide returns. <\/p>\n

Betz of Carret Zane, who has corresponded with Buffett over the years, said he\u2019d been told the CEO gets more than 100 letters a day, and reads them all. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how many times a note to Warren Buffett results in an invitation to come to Omaha,\u201d said Betz. <\/p>\n

As for Goldenberg\u2019s: \u201cBoy, it must\u2019ve been one heck of a letter.\u201d<\/p>\n

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