Who Is Warren Buffett?
Born in Nebraska in 1930, Warren Buffett demonstrated
keen business abilities at a young age. He formed Buffett Partnership Ltd. in
1956, and by 1965 he had assumed control of Berkshire Hathaway. Overseeing the
growth of a conglomerate with holdings in the media, insurance, energy and food
and beverage industries, Buffett became one of the world's richest men and a
celebrated philanthropist.
Early Life
Businessman and investor. Born Warren Edward Buffett
on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett's father, Howard, worked as
stockbroker and served as a U.S. congressman. His mother, Leila Stahl Buffett,
was a homemaker. Buffett was the second of three children and the only boy.
Buffett demonstrated a knack for financial and
business matters early in his childhood. Friends and acquaintances have said
the young boy was a mathematical prodigy who could add large columns of numbers
in his head, a talent he occasionally demonstrated in his later years.
Warren often visited his father's stockbrokerage shop
as a child, and chalked in the stock prices on the blackboard in the office. At 11 years old he made his
first investment, buying three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38 per
share. The stock quickly dropped to only $27, but Buffett held on
tenaciously until they reached $40. He sold his shares at a small profit, but
regretted the decision when Cities Service shot up to nearly $200 a share. He
later cited this experience as an early lesson in patience in investing.
First Entrepreneurial Venture
By the age of
13, Buffett was running his own businesses as a paperboy and selling his own
horseracing tip sheet. That same
year, he filed his first tax return, claiming his bike as a $35 tax deduction.
In 1942, Buffett's father was elected to the U.S.
House of Representatives, and his family moved to Fredricksburg, Virginia, to
be closer to the congressman's new post. Buffett attended Woodrow Wilson High
School in Washington, D.C., where he continued plotting new ways to make money.
During his high school tenure, he and a friend purchased a used pinball machine
for $25. They installed it in a barbershop, and within a few months the profits
enabled them to buy other machines. Buffett owned machines in three different
locations before he sold the business for $1,200.
Higher Education and Early
Career
Buffett enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania at
the age of 16 to study business. He stayed two years, moved to the University
of Nebraska to finish up his degree, and emerged from college at age 20 with
nearly $10,000 from his childhood businesses.
Influenced by Benjamin Graham's 1949 book, The
Intelligent Investor, Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School to study
under the acclaimed economist and investor. After earning his master's degree
in 1951, he sold securities for Buffett-Falk & Company for three years,
then worked for his mentor for two years as an analyst at Graham-Newman
Corp.
In 1956, Buffet formed the firm Buffett Partnership
Ltd. in his hometown of Omaha. Utilizing the techniques learned from Graham, he
was successful in identifying undervauled companies and became a
millionaire. One such enterprise Buffett valued was a textile company named
Berkshire Hathaway. He began accumulating stock in the early 1960s, and by
1965 he had assumed control of the company.
Business Empire
Despite the success of Buffett Partnership, its
founder dissolved the firm in 1969 to focus on the development of Berkshire
Hathaway. He phased out its textile manufacturing division, instead expanding
the company by buying assets in media (The Washington Post), insurance
(GEICO) and oil (Exxon). Immensely successful, the "Oracle of
Omaha" even managed to spin seemingly poor investments into gold, most
notably with his purchase of scandal-plagued Salomon Brothers in 1987.
Following Berkshire Hathaway's significant investment
in Coca-Cola, Buffett became director of the company from 1989 until 2006. He
has also served as director of Citigroup Global Markets Holdings, Graham
Holdings Company and The Gillette Company.
Recent Activity and Philanthropy
In June 2006, Buffett made an announcement that he
would be giving his entire fortune away to charity, committing 85 percent of it
to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This donation became the largest
act of charitable giving in United States history. In 2010, Buffett and Gates
announced they had formed The Giving Pledge campaign to recruit more
wealthy individuals for philanthropic causes.
In 2012, Buffett disclosed that he had been diagnosed
with prostate cancer. He began undergoing radiation treatment in July, and
successfully completed his treatment in November.
The health scare did little to slow the octogenarian,
who annually ranks near the top of the Forbes world billionaires
list. In February 2013, Buffett purchased H. J. Heinz with private equity group
3G Capital for $28 billion. Later additions to the Berkshire Hathaway stable
included battery maker Duracell and Kraft Foods Group, which merged with
Heinz in 2015 to form the third-largest food and beverage company in North
America.
Warren Buffett at a Town Hall rally for Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at Sokol Auditorium on December 16, 2015
in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo: Steve Pope/Getty Images)
In 2016, Buffett launched Drive2Vote, a website
aimed at encouraging people in his Nebraska community to exercise their right
to vote, as well as to assist in registering and driving voters to a polling
location if they needed a ride.
A vocal supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, whom he’d endorsed in
2015, Buffett also challenged the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, to meet and share their tax
returns. "I will meet him in Omaha or Mar-a-Lago or, he can pick the
place, anytime between now and election, he said at an August 1 rally in Omaha.
"I'll bring my return, he'll bring his return. We're both under audit. And
believe me, nobody's going to stop us from talking about what's on those
returns." Trump did not accept the offer, and his refusal to share his
returns ultimately did not prevent his election to the presidency in
2016.
In May 2017, Buffett revealed that he had begun selling
some of the approximately 81 million shares he owned in IBM stock, noting that
he did not value the company as highly as he did six years earlier. Following
another sale in the third quarter, his stake in the company dropped to
about 37 million shares. On the flip side, he increased his investment in
Apple by 3 percent, and became Bank of America's largest shareholder by
exercising warrants for 700 million shares. Early the following year, he added
more Apple shares to make it Berkshire Hathaway's largest common stock
investment.
Healthcare Venture
On January 30, 2018, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan
Chase and Amazon delivered a joint press release in which they announced plans
to team up and form a new healthcare company for their U.S. employees.
According to the release, the yet-to-be-named company
will be "free from profit-making incentives and constraints" as it
tries to find ways to cut costs and improve the overall process for patients,
with an initial focus on technology solutions.
Calling the swelling costs of healthcare a
"hungry tapeworm on the American economy," Buffett said, "We
share the belief that putting our collective resources behind the country’s
best talent can, in time, check
the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient satisfaction and
outcomes."
1.
What tenses are used in the article? (show the
proof)
Answer : this article used simple past continous tense
Proof : At 11 years old he made his first investment, buying three shares of
Cities Service Preferred at $38 per share.
2.
Restate
one sentence in the article into gerund / to + infinitive
Answer : check the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient
satisfaction and outcomes.
check the rise in health costs while concurrently to enchace patient
satisfaction and outcomes.
3.
Show a use of personal pronouns or possessive pronouns or
reflexive pronouns in the article.
Answer : By the age of 13, Buffett was running his own businesses as a
paperboy and selling his
own horseracing tip sheet.
