Business School 2003

6 March 2004

Warren Buffett’s 2003 Letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway is now available on line, as is the 2003 Annual Report which includes his letter. Both are pdf files.

Read all the letters dating back to 1977 carefully. Read them again. You’ll have one of the finest business educations money can buy.

Our federal tax return for 2002 (2003 is not finalized), when we paid $1.75 billion, covered a mere 8,905 pages. As is required, we dutifully filed two copies of this return, creating a pile of paper seven feet tall. At World Headquarters, our small band of 15.8, though exhausted, momentarily flushed with pride: Berkshire, we felt, was surely pulling its share of our countrys fiscal load.

Warren Buffett
2003 Letter to Shareholders

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Upcoming Letter From Mr. Buffett

3 March 2004

Saturday, March 6, 2004, Berkshire Hathaway will post its 2003 annual report and the letter to shareholders from Warren Buffett. It’s a highlight of my investing year.

For those new to this topic, it has been said that a careful reading (and rereading) of Mr. Buffett’s letters to shareholders since 1977 is more useful than two years in business school.

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ComcAst Going After Disney

11 February 2004

Here’s a letter from the CEO of Comcast to the CEO of Disney. It’s a $54.1 billion letter.

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Thinking Big

2 February 2004

In Fairbanks, Alaska, the newspaper is called the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. This article covers the recent announcment by Mid American Energy Holdings concerning the contruction of a 48-inch diameter natural gas pipeline that would run from Alaska’s North Slope to the Yukon border.

Estimates place the amount of gas on the North Slope at around 35 trillion cubic feet. This pipeline would have a design capacity of 4.5 billion cubic feet a day, and would cost $6.3 billion to cover 745 miles.

They want to complete it by December 31, 2010. Mid American is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Wouldn’t it be a great adventure to spend the next five or six years working on such a project?

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Union Planters Becomes Regions

24 January 2004

Union Planters National BankRegions Financial Corporation (NYSE: RF) is buying Union Planters Corporation (NYSE: UPC), a long-time Memphis banking company.

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

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