Labitan.沃伦.巴菲特文集(EN)——The_Warren_Buffett_Bu(6)

Goals

Our long-term economic goal is to maximize the average annual rate of gain in intrinsic business value on a per-share basis. We do not measure the economic significance or performance of Berkshire by its size; we measure by per-share progress. We are certain that the rate of per-share progress will diminish in the future - a greatly enlarged capital base will see to that. We will be disappointed if our rate does not exceed that of the average large American corporation.

Charlie Munger and I can attain our long-standing goal of increasing Berkshire's per-share intrinsic value at an average annual rate of 15%. We have not retreated from this goal. We again emphasize that the growth in our capital base makes 15% an ever-more difficult target to hit.

What we have going for us is a growing collection of good-sized operating businesses that possess economic characteristics ranging from good to terrific, run by managers whose performance ranges from terrific to terrific. You need have no worries about this group.

The capital-allocation work that Charlie and I do at the parent company, using the funds that our managers deliver to us, has a less certain outcome: It is not easy to find new businesses and managers comparable to those we have.

Attitude and Temperament

Our advantage, was attitude: we learned from Ben Graham that the key to successful investing was the purchase of shares in good businesses when market prices were at a large discount from underlying business values. We have no idea how long the excesses will last, nor do we know what will change the attitudes of government, lender and buyer that fuel them. We do know that the less the prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs.

Although our form is corporate, our attitude is partnership. Charlie Munger and I think of our shareholders as owner-partners, and of ourselves as managing partners. (Because of the size of our shareholdings we also are, for better or worse, controlling partners.) We do not view the company itself as the ultimate owner of our business assets. Instead, we view the company as a conduit through which our shareholders own the assets. In line with this owner-orientation, our directors are all major shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. In the case of at least four of the five, over 50% of family net worth is represented by holdings of Berkshire. We eat our own cooking.

Friends and Wonderful Businesses

I attended Columbia University's business school in 1950-51, not because I cared about the degree it offered, but because I wanted to study under Ben Graham, then teaching there. The time I spent in Ben's classes was a personal high, and quickly induced me to learn all I could about my hero. I turned first to Who's Who in America, finding there, among other things, that Ben was Chairman of Government Employees Insurance Company, (GEICO), to me an unknown company in an unfamiliar industry. Ben wrote: “Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.” This quote comes from what I think is the best book on investing ever written - “The Intelligent Investor.”

Berkshire dominates both the investment portfolios of most members of our families and of a great