June 29, 2008 – Leadership and Entrepreneurship Article
Warren Edward Buffett, Chairman and Chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and admired by many analysts for his shrewd business acumen is primarily known for his investing success. Over the years, Buffett developed his own tenets of buying a business or stock. Not only his investments, but companies acquired by Berkshire Hathaway also performed consistently over the years. Berkshire owns more than 60 subsidiaries including insurance, clothing, furniture, jewelry and candy companies, restaurants, natural gas and corporate jet firms and has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co., Anheuser-Busch Cos. and Wells Fargo & Co. Also read Leadership case study on Warren Buffett (10 pages, PDF file).
He is known as the "Oracle of Omaha" and generally considered to be the world’s most successful investor with a net worth around U.S. Dollars 62 Billion. He has figured consistently among the top five in the Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans (the elite Forbes 400). Buffett is also known for his philanthropy and in 2006, he announced his plan to give away the bulk of his nearly $49 billion fortune over time.
It may then not come as a surprise, that last year, $650,100 was the price for a lunch with the great leader in an auction on eBay. Buffett has been auctioning off lunches online for six years. He offers only one lunch a year. The auction benefits the Glide Foundation, which provides social services to the poor and homeless in San Francisco. It is anybody’s guess how high the bidding will go this year. Well to end the surprise, in the most expensive charity auction ever held on eBay, a Chinese investment fund manager (Zhao Danyang) won the chance to have lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett by bidding $2.1 million. The most expensive charity item ever sold on eBay earlier was a Harley Davidson motorcycle for $800,100. The motorcycle was autographed by celebrities that TV show host Jay Leno offered in 2005 for tsunami relief.