Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is a businessman and investor, an economic genius and one of the richest and most respected businessmen in the world. His investment group, Berkshire Hathaway, owns shares in more than 60 different trading companies

Warren Buffett was born in Nebraska, USA in 1930, and showed an enthusiasm for running a business from an early age. He founded Buffett Partnership Ltd. In 1956, by 1965 he took over the Berkshire Hathaway investment group.

Buffett oversaw the management of the investment group and owning shares in several other companies in the fields of media, insurance, energy, food and soft drinks, until he became one of the richest businessmen in the world and most famous for his contributions to philanthropy.

In 1956, he established Buffett Partnership Ltd in his hometown of Omaha. Using the techniques he learned from his teacher Graham, Buffett succeeded in identifying the undervalued companies that made him a millionaire.

Among the companies Buffett singled out was a textile company called Berkshire Hathaway. He began accumulating shares of this company in the early 1960s, and by 1965 he had owned the company.

Despite the success of Buffett’s company, he dissolved the company in 1969; to devote himself to developing Berkshire Hathaway. He proceeded to gradually abolish the textile division, and relied on expanding the company by buying shares in media, such as The Washington Post, insurance, such as Geico, and energy, such as Exxon.

The fortune-teller of Omaha was so successful that he was able to convert some very cheap investments into gold, most notably his purchase of the scandal-ridden Salomon Brothers company in 1987.

Following Berkshire Hathaway’s influential investments in Coca-Cola, Buffett became director of the company from 1989 to 2006. He was director of Citigroup Global Markets Holdings, Graham Holdings Company, and The Gillette Company.

In June 2006, Buffett announced that he would donate all of his wealth to charity, dedicating 85% of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This donation was considered one of the greatest acts of charitable generosity in the history of the United States of America. In 2010, Buffett and Gates announced their founding of The Giving Pledge; To urge more wealthy people to contribute to charitable causes.