Being ‘the next Warren Buffett’ sounds like an honor. It is more of a curse.
a “Chinese Warren Buffett” in a LinkedIn profile, was convicted in 2013 of defrauding customers in a $50 million Ponzi scheme. He was sentenced to six years in jail and released in 2019.
“My goal was never to simply mimic a title, but to apply a specific investment philosophy,” Tang said in an emailed statement. “Regarding the 2013 conviction, it is important to note that I have always maintained my innocence.”Eddie Lampert, Businessweek’s Next Buffett contender back in 2004, transcended for a time the hedge-fund world that made him a billionaire by taking over Kmart in bankruptcy and later adding another troubled retailer, Sears, Roebuck, to his empire.
But the combined company filed for bankruptcy in 2018. Lampert didn’t respond to a request for comment.Many others went on to find success, even if they haven’t (yet) matched Buffett’s record or emerged as a paragon of American business.
Prem Watsa, CEO of Fairfax Financial, a Toronto company that owns insurers and other businesses run in a decentralized, Berkshire-like style, is known as the Warren Buffett of Canada. Watsa told The Wall Street Journal in 2015 that “there’s only one Buffett, and he’s in Omaha.”Chamath Palihapitiya, known as the SPAC king, told Fortune in 2020 that he hoped to be “our generation’s Berkshire,” before high interest rates led to a bust in special-purpose acquisition companies.The venture capitalist argued in a podcast earlier this year that Buffett’s glittering investing results were in part because of the “information asymmetry” that existed in the markets before federal regulations revamped disclosure rules in the early 2000s.
He is now working on building software that incorporates artificial intelligence. Palihapitiya didn’t respond to
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