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."
Source:
https://www.biography.com/people/warren-buffett-9230729
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 : 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.
In June 2006, Buffett made an announcement that he would be
giving his entire fortune away to charity, to commite 85 percent of it to the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation.
3. Show a use of personal pronouns or possessive pronouns or
reflexive pronouns in the article.
Answer : House of Representatives, and his family moved to
Fredricksburg, Virginia, to be closer to the congressman's new post.
