Warren Buffet’s Greatest Deals
Dec 16th, 2009 by Carlos
I was reading a great article over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal that was all about the deals that were brought to Warren Buffett over the past couple of years during all this economic turmoil.
From the article:
Warren Buffett believes his best deals during the economy’s biggest belly flop since the Crash of 1929 may well turn out to be the ones he didn’t do.
Mr. Buffett slammed the door on one opportunity after another during the most harrowing stretch of his storied career. That impulse, he says, left him with the financial firepower he needed last month to strike the biggest deal he has ever done — Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s $26.3 billion purchase of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.
It’s a great lesson that to be great sometimes means passing on certain deals. Being passive isn’t always equated with greatness or even with smarts, but Buffett passed on all the right deals in order to get the one he really wanted: Burlington Northern.
From the WSJ:
After reading The Snowball, it was pretty clear that he was obsessed with railroads, and thanks to his patience he managed to get what he wanted during a time of great turmoil and uncertainty.
The best part about Buffett besides his genius? His modesty:
“I made plenty of mistakes,” he says. “I didn’t maximize the opportunities offered by the chaos. But in the end, it worked out OK.”
