The first Saturday in May brought with it another Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting. I was only able to attend the morning session this year, but I was able to pick up the afternoon session from the national video and audio feed.
Among the things I felt were noteworthy:
For the first time since this meeting became what it is, Vice-Chair Charlie Munger wasn't sitting next to Warren Buffett. Charlie died just short of his 100th birthday last year, and he was missed. A main reason for me to attend the meeting was to see him make funny, smart-ass comments about the state of certain national and international affairs.
This year the company movie that's always shown before the meeting was all about Charlie, with clips of prior meetings and skits. At the end Buffett eulogized Munger, saying while Buffett may have been Berkshire's general contractor, Charlie was its architect.
Buffett was again joined on stage by the current co-CEOs, Greg Abel and Ajit Jain. Abel, who is the Chairman and CEO in-waiting, basically took on Munger's old role of answering questions after Buffett had given his responses. Buffett even accidentally referred to Abel as "Charlie" at the start of the meeting.
Buffett reported that Berky is likely to exceed holding $200 billion in cash(!) this quarter, money they'd rather invest in company acquisitions, if they could find reasonably priced ones.
Another huge crowd attended. At the beginning of the meeting, even the seats behind the stage were nearly full, which I've never seen before. You can't see anything but a video board from there.
As has become the norm, most shareholder questions came from people attending from other countries, notably Europe and Southeast Asia. That they would travel this far for what is not a televised meeting is a little bit cultish, even to me who travels about 150 miles.
Given the opportunity to be heard more, I thought Abel did very well with his responses, and it left me with confidence he's going to handle the CEO job just fine.
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