点评：在2023致股东的信中，巴菲特把芒格先生比喻成总设计师，自己则是总承包商。当股东提问如何保持伯克希尔的竞争优势时，巴菲特有给大家上了一次管理课，董事会不需要经常做出决定。董事们 99% 的工作是选对 CEO。如果他们。剩下的 1% 是如果做了错误的决定如何来纠正它。巴菲特认为在未来20年里这一机制会有效，阿贝尔补充说伯克希尔的文化是股东、合伙人和业务经理都拥有主人翁精神，永远不会改变。现在问题是阿贝尔在2022年夏天以8.7 亿美元的价格出售了他领导的中美能源公司的少数股份，但是截止2023年3月, 阿贝尔通过其家族信托只拥有伯克希尔228 股A类股票，阿贝尔还拥有约 2,400 股价格便宜得多的“B”股，目前总价值约 1.42亿美元，股东们还是希望阿贝尔将大部分个人财产投入到伯克希尔，这样更能体现利益共担。
Becky Quick：这是西班牙的 Rafael DePino 提出的问题。伯克希尔之所以能取得如此巨大的发展，除了其他因素之外，还要感谢建筑师 Munger 先生和您，总承包商，我们都非常感谢您一路走来的支持。我们知道，您和许多其他人都花费了大量时间来确保伯克希尔的企业文化为大楼的发展奠定了坚实的基础。您目前还拥有一批非常有才华的分包商，我们可以称他们为分包商。Abel 先生、Jain 先生、Combs 先生和 Weschler 先生。然而，长期以来，您一直拥有这样的优势：有才华的分包商都希望与一代难逢的设计师和总承包商合作。当承包商团队需要再次更新时，您认为伯克希尔将如何克服这种优势的丧失？这座伟大的建筑中有哪些潜在的翻新工程可能需要新的设计师？
沃伦·巴菲特：是的，这是一个很好的问题，查理和我显然一直在讨论这个问题。当然，只要伯克希尔保持现状，就不需要经常招人。我们的董事会如果选择任何人来经营这项业务，认为你应该在 65 岁退休，那绝对是疯了。也许当你了解他们管理某项业务的真正感受时，他们第二天就应该退休，或者你可能想让他们一直待到他们真正开始受到年老的影响。这对不同的人有不同的影响，但最终对每个人都有影响。董事们很有可能会这样做，这非常困难，因为他们会违背传统智慧行事，这总是很困难的。但我认为我们已经让团队解决了这个问题，他们不需要经常做出决定。如果他们选对了 CEO，这就是董事们 99% 的工作。如果他们。剩下的 1% 是，如果你做了错误的决定，你是否有好的方法来纠正它？这在我们目前的制度下是极其困难的。这并非不可能，但根本不会发生。做董事是一份好工作，很难被别人推翻，特别是如果你可以利用董事职位的钱，并且你想进入其他董事会等等。我们的董事会或董事制度根本不完美。而且它根本不起作用，好吧，我不应该说它根本不起作用，但它的运作方式与人们想象的不同。它通常有效。除非发生不利事件，否则我们确实已经解决了未来 20 年的问题。如果发生不利事件，那么董事们需要找到一个他们有信心的人，可能是在我们自己的组织内，来保持我们在未来 20 年的特殊优势。有很多事情发生的可能性很小，但你仍然需要考虑，我们现在就处于这种情况。现在，如果你问我，如果今天格雷格发生了什么事，每个人都会说，不要乘坐同一架飞机。应该做的是不要乘坐同一辆汽车。飞机坠毁的次数并不多，汽车却时有发生。我看过很多公司政策，如果考虑到真正的风险，这些政策就有点疯狂了。但无论如何，格雷格必须告诉董事们，如果明天发生了什么事，该怎么办。他必须告诉董事们，如果他出了什么事，该怎么办。这不是一件容易的事，我没有——好吧，这将是他的决定，然后董事们真的要决定他是否做出了正确的决定，但他会做出正确的决定。你真正需要希望的是，你能幸运地决定经理们能坚持多久。我的意思是，你可能需要三百年，也可能需要六七年，但答案是你需要一点运气，你需要在死亡率表上有所突破。但我们有一个实体，如果你真的渴望成为一个真正大型实体的某种类型的经理，世界上没有什么能比得上它。所以我们可以为想要的人提供一些东西。这有点像查理说的嫁给最适合你的人。好吧，从伯克希尔的角度来看，我们找到了合适的人选。如果我们找错了人，那么董事们就必须采取措施，而这可能不会发生。但我认为，这始终是一种偶然事件，一种可能性。格雷格，既然你被置于这样的境地，现在你不必说出任何人的名字，但我相信观众会喜欢它并成为新闻。
格雷格·阿贝尔：沃伦，我想补充的唯一一点是，这也是我评论的开头，是关于文化的。伯克希尔的文化，作为股东、合伙人和业务经理，拥有主人翁精神，永远不会改变，而且会吸引各个层面的合适经理。所以我认为，正如沃伦所说，伯克希尔是一家非常特别的公司，但正是这种文化让它变得特别，这一点不会改变。
Becky Quick: this is a question from Rafael DePino from Spain. Berkshire has grown tremendously thanks to, and among other things, its architect, Mr Munger, and you, its general contractor, were all tremendously thankful to you for taking us along the way. We are aware that both of you and many others have spent an enormous amount of time ensuring Berkshire’s culture provides a solid footing on which to grow the building. You also currently have a very talented bench of what we may label as subcontractors. Mr Abel, Mr Jain, Mr Combs, and Mr Weschler. However, for a long time, you’ve had the advantage that talented subcontractors have wanted to work with a once in a generation architect and general contractor. How do you envision Berkshire will overcome the loss of said advantage when the contractor bench needs to be renewed again? And what are potential renovation works in this great building that may necessitate a new architect?
Warren Buffett: Yeah, well, that’s a great question, which Charlie and I obviously talked a lot about over time. And of course, Berkshire, to the extent it remains the sort of entity that it is, will not need to attract people very often. It would be absolutely crazy for anybody, for our board of directors to ever pick anybody to run this business that thought, you should retire at 65. It may be that they should retire the next day when you learn what they’re really like managing something, or it may turn that you want to keep them around till they really start being affected by old age. Which hits different people at different times, but it hits everybody eventually. It’s very likely if the directors, and it’s very tough, because they will be acting against conventional wisdom, which is always difficult. But I think we’ve got the group on that, and they will not have to make a decision very often. If they pick the right CEO, that’s 99% of the job of the directors. And if they. The other 1% is, do you have a good method to correct it if you’ve made a wrong decision? And that’s extremely hard to do in our present system. It’s not impossible, but it’s just not something that happens. It’s too good a job to be a director, to try and throw over somebody, particularly if you can use the money from directorships and you want to be on other boards and everything. We do not have a perfect system in terms of boards or directors at all. And it’s. It doesn’t operate at all, well, I shouldn’t say at all, but it doesn’t operate as people may think. It generally operates. We’ve really got the problem solved for the next 20 years unless something untoward happens. And if something untoward happens, then. Then the directors need to find, probably within our own organization, somebody that they’ve got confidence in to maintain the special advantages we have over another 20 years period. There’s various things that are low probabilities, but you still have to think about them, and we are in that position now. Now, if you asked me whether, if something happened to Greg today, everybody says, don’t travel on the same plane. The thing to do is not travel in the same auto. Planes don’t go down that often. Autos crash all the time. I’ve seen all these corporate policies on that, which are kind of crazy when you think about the real risk. But in any event, Greg is going to have to tell the directors about what if something happened tomorrow. He has to tell the directors about what should be done if anything happens to him. And that’s not an easy thing to do, and I don’t have - well, it will be his decision, and then the director’s really to decide whether he’s made the right one, but he will make the right one. And what you really have to hope is that you get lucky on how long managers stick around. I mean, you might need three in the century, and you might need six or seven, but the answer is you need a little luck, and you need some break in the mortality tables. But we’ve got an entity that if you really aspire to be a certain kind of manager, of a really large entity, there’s nothing like it in the world. So we’ve got something to offer the person who we want to have. It’s sort of like Charlie said about marrying the best person that will have you. Well, we’ve got something that the right person would want to marry, basically, in terms of Berkshire. And if we get the wrong person, then the directors have to do something about it, and that probably won’t happen. But it’s always a contingency, a possibility, I should say. Greg, having been put on the spot like that, you don’t have to name anybody now, but I’m sure the crowd would love it and make news.
Greg Abel: Well, the only thing I would add, Warren, is, and it’s really how the comment started, was around culture. The culture we have at Berkshire and that being our shareholders, being our partners and our managers of our business, having that ownership mentality, that’s never going to change and that will attract the right managers at every level. So I think, as Warren said, we have a very special company in Berkshire, but it’s that culture that makes it special, and that’s not going to change.