The Greatest Company on Earth

By Glen Arnold

In this fourth volume of The Deals of Warren Buffett, we trace Warren Buffett’s journey as he made Berkshire Hathaway the most respected company in the world.

When we left Buffett at the end of Volume 3 toward the end of the 1990s, he was leading the largest corporation in America, and his personal fortune had reached $40bn. In this enthralling next instalment, we follow Buffett’s investment deals over the first few years of the twenty-first century, as Berkshire grew to be a giant making annual profits north of $8bn.

Buffett, then in his seventies, was still tap dancing to work, thoroughly enjoying analysing companies, finding bargains and interacting with his growing team of managers.

By studying the decision-making that went into his investment deals, and the successful and unsuccessful outcomes, we can learn from Buffett and become better investors ourselves.

In this period, exploiting the low prices following the dot-com crash, Buffett made investments in the following companies: MidAmerican Energy, CORT, H&R Block, Moody’s, M&T Bank, Shaw Industries, Clayton Homes, McLane, PetroChina and Wal-Mart.

For each of these deals, investing expert and Buffett historian Glen Arnold dives into unprecedented detail to analyse the investment rationale, the stories of the individuals involved and the profits Buffett made.

Despite holding positions of Professor of Investment and Professor of Corporate Finance, Glen Arnold concluded that academic life was not nearly as much fun (nor as intellectually stimulating) as making money in the markets. As a wealthy investor in his fifties, he now spends most of his time running his equity portfolio from an office in the heart of rural Leicestershire, far from the noise of the City of London.

His main research focus explores the question, 'What works in investment?', drawing on the ideas of the great investors, academic discoveries and corporate strategic analysis - see www.glen-arnold-investments.co.uk. While he used to teach on this subject in the City, he would now rather concentrate on actual investment analysis, but does explain his investment choices and discusses investment ideas at newsletters.advfn.com/deepvalueshares.

He is the author of the UK's bestselling investment book and bestselling corporate finance textbook.