Warren Buffett: Companies Should Stop Wasting Time On Diversity

two dozen men and women work with you, Warren, in our corporate office. I see that since last year the image quality has improved in the annual report, so congratulations on that. However, when looking at it, there is something that catches everyone's attention and that is the lack.

diversity

among staff A 2015 analysis by Calvert Investments found that Coca-Cola was one of the best

companies

for workplace

diversity

, while Berkshire Hathaway was one of the worst. You have explicitly stated that you do not consider diversity when hiring for leadership roles and board members need to change, are we missing out on investment opportunities as a result?

Do they consider diversity, no matter how the company's leadership and staff are defined, when analyzing the value of a company you might want to buy? Well, there is a multiple part, of course, the last one. The answer to the last one is no, um, what was the previous one? You have explicitly stated that you do not consider diversity when hiring for leadership roles and board members. Does that need to change and are we missing out on investment opportunities as a result? No, we will select the board members, they and we will lay it out and we have for years and I think we have been much more explicit than most

companies

.

We're looking for people with business savvy who are shareholder-oriented and who have a special interest in Berkshire and we found people like that and as a result I think we have the best board we could have, they're not in, they're clearly not in it for the money. , they call me to console me. companies that have been told to look for director candidates at other companies and it's clear from the questions they ask that they have more than just the three questions we ask in terms of directors in mind, uh, I really want someone whose name reflects the credit of the institution, which means a big name that you know and, you know, an organization recently, the one that did the blood samples with small pricks, has some very big names on its board of directors, and Serranos.

I think the way you pronounce it, Charlie, there's no, yeah, yeah, and I mean the names are great, but we're not interested in people who want to be on the board because they want to make two or three hundred thousand. . dollars a year, you know, for ten percent of your

time

and we're not interested in those for whom it's a Prestige item, so who want to go and check boxes or that kind of thing, so I think we have We have that we will continue to apply that test geared toward business-savvy shareholders, with a strong vested interest in Berkshire and every Berkshire share that our shareholders own, they bought it like everyone else in this room, they haven't gotten it option or not. they've gotten it, you know, I've been in forums where they've given me shares, you know, I get it for breathing, basically, those half a dozen places that are maybe three or four that I was on the board of uh we want our shareholders walk in the shoes I mean our directors walk in the shoes of the shareholders we want to care a lot about the business and we want to be smart enough that they know enough about business so that they know what they

should

get involved in or what they

should

n't get involved in get people involved in the office uh I hope when we take the Christmas photo again this year it will be the exact same 25 that were there last year, although we could have added 30,000 employees elsewhere and maybe 10 billion in sales or something so uh, it's a remarkable group of people and I mean, take this meeting with practically every one of the 25, our CFO, my assistant, whatever they've been doing, job after job related to doing This meeting was a success and a pleasant exit for our shareholders.

It is a cooperative effort. The idea that you would have some department called the annual meeting department and you know you would have one person in charge of it and she or he would have an assistant and then they would go to various conferences about holding annual meetings and develop, you know, and then hire consultants to come and help them in the meeting, we just don't operate that way and it's a place where everyone helps. between us, but part of what makes my job good, my job is extraordinarily easy with the people around me really make it easy and part of the reason it's easy is because we don't, we don't have any.

Committees Maybe we have a committee that I don't know, but I have never been invited to any committee. I'll put it that way at Berkshire and we don't do it, when we might have a PowerPoint somewhere that hasn't done it. I've seen it and I wouldn't know how to use it anyway, they just don't do it, we don't have work activities and we could go to a baseball game together or something, but I've seen the other one. type of operation and I like ours better. I'll put it that way Charlie, well, years ago I worked for the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles and my senior partner pompously said, you know you don't need to hire us to do this.

There are a lot of good Catholic tax lawyers, the archbishop looked at him like he was an idiot and said, Mr. Peeler, you say I had a very serious surgery last year and I didn't look for the top Catholic surgeon, that's how I feel about the board. . members