America’s second richest man, Warren Buffett, announced on 60 Minutes tonight that his son Howard would succeed him as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. News had leaked by Friday, as my colleague Clare O’Connor reported, that Howie, as he is known to his family, would eventually become nonexecutive chairman, serving as guardian of the company’s values but having nothing to do with the firm’s investment decisions.
I watched the interview with Leslie Stahl to learn more about Buffett’s middle child but also to get a glimpse into the personal life of one of the world’s most successful men. It was at times quite revealing. Asked by Stahl about his father’s decision to tap him, Howard, 57, a corn and soybean farmer who still likes to get his hands dirty and spends hours on his tractor, admitted he was surprised.
So too was most of America. So what did we learn about his qualifications and the Buffett family? For starters, the three children had little idea growing up just how successful their father was. “We knew he was a security analyst,” recalls Howard, but says they didn’t understand what that meant. His sister once told her class that their father was a security guard, not knowing the difference.
Buffett also apparently never pressured his children to finish college or go into business, encouraging them instead to find something they loved to do as much as he loved to make money. “In the world’s eyes, I could never be seen as successful as him. My dad and mom always made that clear that was okay,” Howard (whose middle name is Graham, as in legendary value investor Benjamin Graham) told Stahl. None of the three graduated from college; Howard, who is the only one of the children to ever sit on Berkshire Hathaway’s board, dropped out of three colleges. But he did find his passion in farming.
At age 5, he turned the family’s Omaha backyard into a corn field. Warren later bought land for him and charged him rent, tying the amount to Howard’s bodyweight. The higher it was, the higher the rent; it didn’t evidently help Howard, who is overweight, keep his weight down. Today he is a successful farmer who owns 15,000 acres in Illinois, Nebraska and South Africa. Warren said of his son: “He likes machinery, moving dirt. He is happiest when he’s working hard. I am happiest when I am sitting around watching football.”
Howard is also a philanthropist who apparently gets $1 billion of his father’s money to spend on charitable giving, as do his sister and brother. (Earlier articles had stated that his father had set up a foundation a couple of decades ago so each of his children could give away $100,000 a year. Howard reportedly used it to initially support bear rehabilitation center and mountain lion research, among other things. Then later on his father had given them $35 million apiece.)
Established in 1999, his Howard G. Buffett Foundation’s (HGBF) primary mission is to improve the standard of living and quality of life for the world’s most impoverished and marginalized populations. It apparently spends $50 million a year on various programs around the world, particularly in Africa.
Not surprisingly one of his biggest projects is improving lives of poor farmers, themselves often starving. His goal is to help teach them methods that they can afford to implement after his programs end. He also insists they learn accounting.
This is apparently in contrast to the approach used by the Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation, the organization to which his father has pledged more than $30 billion, which relies more heavily on introducing technology to third world farming. “He’s really pushing a system that is similar to what we have outside this door in America,” explained Howard to Stahl, “I told him that we have got to stop doing it like we did.”
“Your father gives money to Gates. You come out and say it’s all wrong. Is this sibling rivalry?” asked Stahl. Gates and Buffett, the country’s two richest men, have become good friends, often playing bridge, celebrating birthdays and traveling together on vacations. Howard responded that Bill, who they call brother Bill, is the smartest guy in the world besides his dad, but pointed out that he understands agriculture quite well and had used a similar approach unsuccessfully when first starting to give away money.
Some details about Howard that Stahl didn’t cover include the fact that Buffett’s son is a writer of more than half a dozen books; sits on the board of Sloan Implement, a privately owned distributor of John Deere agricultural equipment; and also previously served on the boards of food processor Archer Daniels Midland; Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in the world; and ConAgra Foods. He has also traveled to more than 95 countries documenting the food and conservation challenges. In 2005, he received the Will Owen Jones Distinguished Journalist of the Year Award, and in 2007, he was appointed a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Against Hunger on behalf of the World Food Programme. In 2011, he received the World Ecology Award.
It could be a long time before Howard succeeds his father – “He won’t leave until he’s buried in the ground,” Howard told Stahl – and even longer before anyone knows if he proves to be a decent successor. Still he’s certainly proven himself to be a worthy scion of an admirable man, one who has his feet firmly planted in the earth.
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