Buffett allays health fears at shareholders’ meeting

Mr Buffett also revealed that he recently tried to make one of the biggest acquisitions of his career.

While Mr Buffett called it “a really minor event,” his early-stage prostate cancer was a reminder that for all his success as an investor, Mr Buffett is mortal and would be hard to replace at the company he has run since 1965.

That made the future of Berkshire, with or without Buffett, a central focus of five hours of questions at its annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.

“I don’t think that every deal that I made would necessarily be makeable by a successor, but they’ll bring other talents,” including skills to be an effective chief risk officer, Mr Buffett said. “We’re not going to have an arts major in charge of Berkshire.”

The annual meeting is the centrepiece of a weekend of events that Buffett has dubbed “Woodstock for Capitalism.” Around 40,000 shareholders were expected to attend this year.

Mr Buffett also said that he recently considered a more than $20bn acquisition, and would have sold some Berkshire stock holdings he wanted to keep to get it done.

Mr Buffett did not name the target. A takeover of that magnitude would have been close in size to Berkshire’s biggest takeover – the $26.5bn purchase of rail company Burlington Northern Santa Fe in 2010.

Berkshire has about 80 operating units, which sell things such as car insurance, chemicals, clothing, furniture and ice cream.

Among the internal candidates seen as possible future Berkshire chief executives are Ajit Jain, Buffett’s top insurance lieutenant; Matthew Rose, who leads Burlington Northern; and Greg Abel, who runs the MidAmerican Energy unit.

Mr Buffett has also hired two portfolio managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, to handle some of Berkshire’s investments. He said each was recently given another $1bn to invest, boosting their portfolios to $2.75bn each.

The meeting took place after Berkshire said first-quarter profit more than doubled, as its insurance business was spared the huge losses that natural disasters in Australia, Japan and New Zealand caused a year earlier.

Mr Buffett also said Berkshire may buy more newspapers. It owns the Buffalo News, and has just bought the Omaha World-Herald. It is a long-standing shareholder of Washington Post Co.