Today, Berkshire Hathaway is massive conglomerate worth north of $785 billion with businesses and investments all around the world. This exceeded Charlie Munger’s wildest dreams.
“I did not think we’d ever have … so many hundreds of billions in Berkshire,” Munger, the former vice chairman of Berkshire, said in his final interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick just a few weeks before passing away at the age of 99. “I did not anticipate … we would ever get to $100 billion, much less several hundred billion.”
“It was an amazing occurrence,” said Munger in bits of the interview aired by CNBC on Tuesday evening.
Among Berkshire’s biggest investments in public companies are Apple and American Express. The company also counts freight rail operator BNSF, insurance giant Geico and See’s Candies.
Munger attributed the success of he and Buffett, 93, to two reasons. “We got a little less crazy than most people. That really helped us. In addition, we were given much longer time to run than most people, because something kept us alive in our 90s. That gave us a long track from our fiddling start all the way to the 90s.”
He also noted both he and Buffett became wiser as they got older.
“We got into better and better companies, and we understood more of the bad things that can happen, and how easily they can creep in,” he said.