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Part - VI

On Berkshire Hathaway

Q: You've always said you'll stay at Berkshire Hathaway for the rest of your life.

A: And quite a few years thereafter. When I'm gone, I'll ask them to put my ashes in a little urn in the office, just so I can keep an eye on things.

I'd like to do nothing else. I've been offered other things. I CAN change. If I wanted to cook hamburgers at McDonalds, I'd go get myself a job doing that. But no. I like what I do. I love what I do.

Q: Who is the next you?

A: My job is really pretty easy now. And it will probably get split into two functions when I die. There will be somebody running marketable securities and somebody overseeing the businesses. But the people who should be running them are running the businesses. They don't need any more direction. So that shouldn't be a problem. The hard part is allocating capital intelligently. Right now, pre-tax, we probably have $100 million coming in per week. And that means you've got to find some intelligent things to do with that money. For the present, that's my job.

Q: How is Berkshire Hathaway going to do this year?

A: We would probably do pretty well this year. Because we got killed last year and if they're some incredible mega-catastrophe, we could get killed again this year too. But so far, it looks like our insurance business will do quite well. And the rest of the businesses are doing pretty well. So it looks to me like this year will be pretty good. But nobody should buy a stock because of that. If I told you that 2003 would be good, you shouldn't buy the stock because of that. The real question is where we are 10 years from now.

Q: What do you think you will be 10 years from now?

A: I think I will still be running Berkshire. And you'd still be asking me what I am buying. But I think we'll own a lot more businesses. And I think we would be very conservatively financed. Because that is the way I like to run it. And I think we would be generating a lot more capital than we generate now. And I'll be looking for even bigger and more businesses to buy.

Q: What's the best performing asset in your portfolio right now? And which do you think is the standout grower now?

A: I love them all. The big business with us is insurance. And that business is barring a mega catastrophe, which could happen tomorrow, that business is in good shape. We've got great managers and we've got good distribution facilities. And we've got some long terms competitive advantages there. So that's in good shape. Actually our largest industrial business is the carpet business. And the carpet business is very strong now. Shaw will do very well this year. But then we've got home building too.

Q: You have said recently that the company is not likely to produce the returns that it has in the past?

A: It isn't going to, it can't.

Q: You promised though, above average returns?

A: We certainly, I would be disappointed if we don't. Because that is why I go to work every morning. But the size is just too great. It can't conceivably compound at anything like the rate that it has in the past.

Q: So what do you do, to produce above average returns?

A: I just try to allocate capital intelligently and I try to be somebody that a bunch of talented managers might want to work for. We've had good luck on the latter. We've got the best group of managers in the world.

Concluded.