Berkshire Hathaway at Lazer Grant

This year’s Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, also known as the Woodstock of Capitalism, is on Saturday, May 6th.  Lazer Grant will be hosting a small group in our boardroom for the live webcast of the meeting.  The webcast will go live at 9 a.m.  Yahoo, the webcaster, will interview directors, managers, stockholders and celebrities before the meeting and during the lunch break.  The question-and-answer period, the highlight of the meeting, will start at 9:30 and run until 3:30, with a one-hour lunch break at noon.  We will be providing a box lunch.

Amongst the many gems from past meetings are:

• “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
• “A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”
• “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
• “Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy.  And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.  You think about it:  it’s true.  If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”

Craig McIntosh, a friend, client and attendee of many Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings, will be our master of ceremonies.  He is passionate about Berkshire Hathaway, prudent investing and good business principles.  He will assist in ensuring all the nuggets of wisdom dispensed by Warren Buffet and his partner Charlie Munger are captured.

Read more about the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on the next page.

If you would like to attend the meeting in our office, please email Cynthia Borges at cborges@lazergrant.ca.  She will respond with a confirmation.  Seating is very limited; we will allocate space on a first-come/first-serve basis.

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Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting – format:

Warren Buffet and partner Charlie Munger respond to questions.  In the words of Warren,

We will have the same three financial journalists lead the question-and-answer period at the meeting, asking Charlie and me questions that shareholders have submitted to them by e-mail. The journalists and their e-mail addresses are:  Carol Loomis, the preeminent business journalist of her time, who may be e-mailed at loomisbrk@gmail.com; Becky Quick of CNBC, at BerkshireQuestions@cnbc.com; and Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times, at arsorkin@nytimes.com.

From the questions submitted, each journalist will choose the six he or she decides are the most interesting and important to shareholders.  The journalists have told me your question has the best chance of being selected if you keep it concise, avoid sending it in at the last moment, make it Berkshire-related and include no more than two questions in any e-mail you send them.  (In your e-mail, let the journalist know if you would like your name mentioned if your question is asked.)

 An accompanying set of questions will be asked by three analysts who follow Berkshire.  This year the insurance specialist will be Jay Gelb of Barclays.  Questions that deal with our non-insurance operations will come from Jonathan Brandt of Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb and Gregg Warren of Morningstar.  Since what we will be conducting is a shareholders’ meeting, our hope is that the analysts and journalists will ask questions that add to our owners’ understanding and knowledge of their investment.

 Neither Charlie nor I will get so much as a clue about the questions headed our way. Some will be tough, for sure, and that’s the way we like it.  Multi-part questions aren’t allowed; we want to give as many questioners as possible a shot at us.  Our goal is for you to leave the meeting knowing more about Berkshire than when you came.