Alice Schroeder on Warren Buffett: “He is the most complex person I've ever met.”
“He [has] simple tastes and simple habits,” said Schroeder, “but he is not a simple person.”
A few days after Warren Buffett stunned the financial world with his retirement announcement, Alice Schroeder joined The Radio National Hour in Australia to offer her perspective on this historic changing of the guard.
As Buffett’s authorized biographer and author of The Snowball, she once had unparalleled access to the man himself. Years of honest conversation, unguarded moments, and a front-row seat to one of the most remarkable minds of any time.
A note of context before we begin: Since this conversation took place in the immediate aftermath of Buffett’s announcement, Schroeder (or anyone else) did not yet know all the details of how Berkshire Hathaway would be run in his absence. Some of her commentary may sound out-of-date now, but captures the uncertainty of those first unsettled days. Enjoy!
Host: Warren Buffett made this announcement at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Just give us a sense of that meeting — because these gatherings have become a kind of mecca for Buffett shareholders.
Alice Schroeder: Over the years, the number of people attending has grown and grown to exceed 40,000 people, which fills the largest convention center in Nebraska. There is shopping and there are entertainments and parties — and it lasts an entire weekend in addition to the meeting proper, which is about six hours long. It’s unlike any other shareholder meeting really, I think, in the world.
Did you have any sense that this was the year that Warren Buffett was going to make that announcement?
No. It clearly was coming at some point. He’s 94 [now] and he will retire at 95. I have heard people say that they had a sense. I went for many, many years to the meeting and every year people would predict that this would be the year. So, with hindsight, whoever predicted it this year looks very smart. (Laughs)
He clearly was a man who loved his work. Your biography of him was called The Snowball because he said he wanted to be like a snowball — constantly in motion, gathering wealth and friends. That doesn’t sound like the kind of person who’s going to cope well with retirement.
That is an excellent point. It is really important that he has kept the role of chairman and advisor to the company at a time when I think the board of directors will have to step up and play a bigger role. He needs that stimulation because he would be bored and it would not be good for his health, so I think it’s a good situation.1
Remind us how you came to know Warren Buffett and came to write that book.
I was working on Wall Street. I was an insurance analyst and I decided that I would cover the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, meaning analyze it.2
I actually got a phone call from him out of the blue because I was the only person who had chosen to do that — and he offered me the opportunity to go out to Omaha, interview him, see the businesses, etc. For five years, I covered the stock of Berkshire Hathaway and I was the only person who did.
At the end of that, he started pushing me to write a book, saying he didn’t want to write the book about himself.3 So we worked out that he would cooperate with me, which is important because he did not actually want the kind of control that you have in an authorized biography or an “as told to” kind of book. It’s my perspective on him. He did not edit it. He did not ask for any changes. And he wasn’t entirely happy with it, which I feel good about because that means it was fair.
There was some reporting that your relationship with Warren Buffett cooled after the publication of the biography. Is that fair?