City Omaha, state Nebraska Financial News

Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger heralds the end of an era, leaving Warren Buffett as the conglomerate's lone investing legend and shining the spotlight on managers who have largely operated in their shadow. Few companies have been so closely associated with their leaders as Berkshire has with Buffett and Munger, who knew each other for more than six decades, the last 45 years as the Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate's chairman and vice chairman. Munger's death on Tuesday, five weeks shy of his 100th birthday, leaves Berkshire Vice Chairmen Greg Abel and Ajit Jain, who respectively oversee its non-insurance and insurance businesses, as the 93-year-old Buffett's top advisers and sounding boards. They became vice chairmen in 2018, started taking a more prominent public role only at the most recent of Berkshire's annual meetings, and will have bigger boots to fill than at almost any other company. Managers have said Abel fully embraces Berkshire's culture, which includes an extreme decentralization that gives business units broad autonomy. That means big units such as the BNSF railroad and Geico car insurer, each with tens of thousands of employees, and small units such as Borsheims jewelry, with about 142 employees, can run without interference from Berkshire headquarters, which employs only about 26 people. But Abel and Jain have different styles from Buffett and Munger. At the 2021 annual meeting, Jain was asked how he and Abel interact with each other. «There is no question that the relationship Warren has with Charlie is unique and it's not going to be duplicated,» Jain said. «We don't interact with each other as often as Warren and Charlie do.

By Jonathan Stempel

Warren Buffett's longtime friend and business partner, Charlie Munger passed away on Tuesday, November 28, at the age of 99, according to his employer, leading to many investors expressing their grief on social media platform X. Berkshire Hathaway, where Munger worked for decades as vice chairman under Buffett, confirmed it was "advised by members of Charlie Munger's family that he peacefully died this morning at a California hospital," as reported by AFP. "Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie's inspiration, wisdom and participation," Warren Buffett said in a statement, according to AFP.

Charlie Munger, who helped Warren Buffett build Berkshire Hathaway into an investment powerhouse, has died

By Jonathan Stempel

Warren Buffett's grandfather for 20 cents an hour during the Great Depression to spending more than four decades as Buffett's second-in-command and foil atop Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Munger's family had advised that he died peacefully on Tuesday morning at a California hospital, said Berkshire. The union of Munger with Buffett is among the most successful in the history of business; they transformed Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire into a multi-billion dollar conglomerate with dozens of business units. Yet the partnership that formally began when they teamed up in 1975 at Berkshire, where Buffett was chairman and Munger became vice chairman in 1978, thrived despite pronounced differences in style, and even investing. Known almost universally as Charlie, Munger displayed a blunter form of musings, often in laconic one-liners, on investing, the economy, and the foibles of human nature. He likened bankers to uncontrollable «heroin addicts,» called the virtual currency Bitcoin «rat poison,» and told CNBC that «gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939 but I think civilized people don't buy gold. They invest in productive businesses.» Munger was no less pithy in talking about Berkshire, which made both he and Buffett billionaires and many early shareholders rich as well. «I think part of the popularity of Berkshire Hathaway is that we look like people who have found a trick,» Munger said in 2010.

Charles Munger, the alter ego, sidekick and foil to Warren Buffett for almost 60 years as they transformed Berkshire Hathaway Inc. from a failing textile maker into an empire, has died. He was 99.

(Reuters) -Charlie Munger, the longtime vice chairman and second-in-command to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa), died on Tuesday morning at a California hospital.

Federal inspectors have twice found hundreds of defects in the locomotives and railcars Union Pacific was using at the world’s largest railyard in Nebraska, but none of those seem to explain why a shipping container filled with toxic acid exploded ther...

donation of his fortune to charitable causes after his death will be open to public scrutiny, though the 93-year-old billionaire said he’s still doing fine for now. “I feel good but fully realize I am playing in extra innings,” the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. chief executive officer said in a Thanksgiving letter to shareholders.

Warren Buffett's company unloaded a number of the smaller investments in its portfolio in the third quarter including GM, Mondelez, Johnson & Johnson, UPS and Procter & Gamble

Nearly 5 million chickens, turkeys and other birds have been slaughtered this year because of a persistent bird flu outbreak that began in 2022, but as big as that number may sound, it’s far less than the number of birds killed last year and that means...

By Jonathan Stempel

Warren Buffett's company has reported a $12.8 billion loss as the paper value of its investments fell, but the companies it owns — particularly the insurers — generally performed well

Federal safety investigators say the automatic braking system railroads were required to install several years ago needs improvement to prevent more derailments

Union Pacific is trimming the ranks of the railroad's management employees as part of the new CEO's push to eliminate layers of bosses involved in decisions

Norfolk Southern has installed the first of what will be more than a dozen of a new generation of automated inspection portals on its tracks in Ohio — not far from where one of its trains derailed in February and spilled hazardous chemicals that caught...

The billionaire Haslam family says in a lawsuit that Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway are trying to artificially depress the price the company is obligated to pay for the family’s remaining 20% stake in the Pilot Travel Centers truck stop company ...

Norfolk Southern's costs related to the East Palestine derailment have grown to reach $966 million

Union Pacific's third-quarter profit fell 19% as the railroad hauled about 3% fewer shipments and costs remained high, but the average speed of its trains improved 5% as new CEO Jim Vena began to tweak the operations

CSX reported a 24% drop in the railroad's third-quarter profit Thursday as it hauled 2% less freight