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Students listen to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting

Friday, May 11, 2007

Professor Mark Hirschey rounded up nearly 180 passes for this year's Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. To his satisfaction, each and every one of the passes was enthusiastically claimed by students at the KU School of Business.

For most people an admission ticket to the 2007 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting cost about $3,600, or the price of a B share in the company. Fortunately for KU Business students, several generous alumni secured extra passes by "donating" their Berkshire stock, giving students a first-class ticket to the world's most illustrious - and unique - corporate annual meeting.

This year's annual meeting drove 27,000 investors to the city of Omaha, Neb., on May 5. The main draw: to hear one of the greatest investors of all times, Warren Buffett, and his business partner, Charlie Munger, talk at length about business, investing and life.

Hirschey has chaperoned groups of students to the meeting, dubbed Woodstock for Capitalists, for more than a decade. As he puts it, "The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting is just very smart people talking about business in a very intelligent manner."

It's a one-of-a-kind forum that attracts investors and media from around the world.

Expecting a packed house, some KU Business students began standing in line Friday evening to snag the best seats when the doors were flung open on Saturday morning at seven.

"Unless you go there," Hirschey said, "you really don't get it. There's nothing else like it. Here you've got two old guys [Buffett and Munger] in Omaha, Neb. - we're not talking San Francisco - and 27,000 people show up to listen to them talk about business."

And, boy, do they talk. Buffett and Munger fielded questions from the crowd for close to six hours. They answered inquires about Berkshire Hathaway's current investments, the state of newspapers, global investing, succession planning, and estate taxes, among many others.

Renee Dowis, a KU MBA student, made the trek to Omaha. She couldn't resist listening to "two of the most prolific investors" speak for hours on end. According to her, "You could almost forget that Buffett and Munger's combined wealth is well over $50 billion."

Several of the KU students sat next to billion-dollar money managers, such as those at the Davis Funds. "It's not just kids going to Omaha, having dinner and a fun time," Hirschey emphasized. "They're sitting at the meeting next to really successful money managers. It allows the students to ask all kinds of questions that they couldn't ask in other sorts of formats."

It's hard to slap a price tag on the informal education the students received at the annual meeting. Without question, though, $3,600 would be selling it short.

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Several alumni and a local financial services organization contributed funds to help defray the cost of this year's trip. The alumni include Jill Docking, who works for A.G. Edwards, and Scott Jones, from Prairie Wind Capital LLC. Security Benefit, based in Topeka, Kan., follows an investing style similar to that of Buffett and contributed funds as well. Cindy Shields, head of equity asset management at Security Benefit, serves on the School's Finance Advisory Board and helped arrange Security Benefit's contribution.

The KU School of Business would like to thank these individuals and Security Benefit for their generous donations.