Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s Partner and ‘Abominable No-Man,’ Dies at 99
livemint.cominsurance and other firms, he kept looking for mediocre businesses at bargain prices. Munger instead focused on great businesses at acceptable prices, reckoning that their ability to produce cash in the future would more than compensate for paying a premium price up front. Over years of discussion, Munger persuaded his partner to change.
“I have been shaped tremendously by Charlie," Buffett said in 1988. “Boy, if I had listened only to Ben [Graham], would I ever be a lot poorer." In 2015, Buffett wrote that Munger taught him: “Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices." Berkshire “has been built to Charlie’s blueprint," Buffett added. Charles Thomas Munger was born in Omaha, Neb., on New Year’s Day, 1924.
His father, Alfred, was a lawyer; his mother, Florence, was a homemaker and avid reader. Munger majored in mathematics at the University of Michigan, then left school to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II.
The military first sent Munger to study thermodynamics and meteorology at the University of New Mexico and the California Institute of Technology, then posted him to an air base in Nome, Alaska, where he served as a weather forecaster. After the war, Munger talked a dean at Harvard Law School into admitting him without a college degree. He graduated magna cum laude.
He considered joining his father’s practice in Omaha before settling in Southern California. He and several partners eventually opened their own law practice in 1962. Today the firm, known as Munger, Tolles & Olson, employs about 200 lawyers.
His first marriage, to Nancy Huggins, ended in divorce. He married his second wife, Nancy Barry Borthwick, in 1956. She
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