Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. As a result of his immense investment success, Buffett is one of the best-known fundamental investors in the world. As of November 2023, he had a net worth of $118 billion, making him the seventh-richest person in the world.

Childhood & Early Life

• Warren Buffett was one of the three children of Howard and Leila Buffett. He had two sisters. His father was a four-term U.S. congressman.
• He started his education at the Rose Hill Elementary School before shifting to Alice Deal Junior High School. He graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1947.
• He had acute business sense even as a small child; he used to earn money by selling chewing gum and soft drinks. As a teenager, he became involved in a number of money making ventures and also started saving and investing his money.
• Warren Buffett enrolled at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1947, where he studied for two years. He shifted to University of Nebraska–Lincoln from where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in business administration.
• Warren attended Columbia Business School and earned a Master of Science in economics in 1951. There he had the privilege of attending classes taught by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd.

Career

• Warren Buffett  worked at his father’s company, Buffett-Falk & Co. from 1951 to 1954, as an investment salesman. By the age of 20, he had already amassed savings worth almost $10,000 in 1950 — this showed what an astute investor he was.
• He was appointed at a starting salary of $12,000 a year at Benjamin Graham’s partnership in 1954. His boss was a difficult man to work with and expected strict adherence to conventional rules of investing which Buffett’s young mind questioned.
• Benjamin Graham retired and closed his partnership in 1956. By this time Buffett had a large amount of personal savings with which he opened Buffett Partnership Ltd., an investment partnership in Omaha.
• He started operating several other partnerships and by the end of the decade he had seven partnerships operating. He became a millionaire in 1962, as a result of his earnings from all his partnerships.
• He merged all the partnerships into one and invested in a textile manufacturing firm called Berkshire Hathaway. He began purchasing the shares of Berkshire Hathaway aggressively during the early 1960s and eventually took over the control of the company.
• During the late 1960s, he shifted the business from textile into the insurance sector and by 1985, the last of the textile mills under Berkshire Hathaway had been sold off.
• Berkshire Hathaway purchased a 12% stake in Salomon Inc. in 1987, and became its largest shareholder; Buffett became its director. Following a scandal in 1990, John Gutfreund the CEO of Salomon Brothers left the company in 1991. Buffett took over as chairman till the crisis passed.
• Buffett began buying stocks in Coca-Cola Company in 1988, eventually purchasing up to 7% of the company for $1.02 billion. It would prove to be one of Berkshire’s best ever investments.
• He entered in $11 billion worth of forward contracts to deliver U.S. dollars against other currencies in 2002. He had earned over $2 billion by April 2006.
• In June 2006, Warren Buffett made an announcement that he would be gradually giving away 85% of his Berkshire holdings to five foundations, the largest contribution of which would go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
• He became the richest person in the world in 2008, with a total net worth estimated at $62 billion by Forbes, overtaking Bill Gates who had been the No.1 on Forbes list for the past 13 years. The very next year, Gates regained the first position and Buffett moved to second place.

Awards & Achievements

• Warren Buffett was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2011.
• He is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and ranks among the world’s wealthiest people. Considered to be the most successful investor of the 20th century, he is also the biggest philanthropists of our times and had pledged to donate most of his fortunes to social causes.

Personal Life & Legacy

• Warren Buffett married Susan Thompson in 1952. The couple had three children. Susan left him in 1977, to pursue her own career and started living separately. They never divorced and remained legally married till Susan’s death in 2004.
• He married his longtime partner, Astrid Menks in 2006; the couple had known each other from the time his first wife left him.
  He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in April 2012, and has successfully completed his treatment.
• He believes in giving back to the society and has pledged to give away the major portion of his wealth to charity, with 83% of it going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.