Charlie Munger, the second-in-command to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, has died at the age of 99, according to his family.
Famous for the quote “all I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I'll never go there,” Mr. Munger was the longtime vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, the $355 billion conglomerate founded by Mr. Buffett.
“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” Mr. Buffett said in a statement.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1924, Mr. Munger enrolled in the University of Michigan during the Second World War to study mathematics but soon dropped out to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he trained as a meteorologist and was promoted to second lieutenant.
Later, he studied at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1948 magna cum laude and went on to work as a real estate attorney, founding the California law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson.
In 1959, Mr. Munger met Mr. Buffett, who encouraged him to give up law to focus on investment management, which Mr. Munger did, running his own investment firm for a number of years.
Mr. Munger joined Berkshire Hathaway in the 1970s and, by 1978, had become vice chair of the company.
‘Cigar-Butt’ Investing
Much like Mr. Buffett, he was known as a pragmatic investor who sought good deals when scouting for great businesses to buy.However, Mr. Buffett would later say that it was Mr. Munger who showed him that paying bottom dollar for troubled businesses that had many flaws—which Mr. Buffett called “cigar-butt” investing—wasn’t worthwhile in the end.
“I call this the ‘cigar butt’ approach to investing,” he continued. “A cigar butt found on the street that has only one puff left in it may not offer much of a smoke, but the ‘bargain purchase’ will make that puff all profit.”
However, Mr. Buffett said it was Mr. Munger who taught him that this kind of approach to buying businesses was “foolish.”
He praised Mr. Munger for his “wide-ranging brilliance, a prodigious memory, and some firm opinions,” while saying that “Charlie’s most important architectural feat was the design of today’s Berkshire.”
“The blueprint he gave me was simple: Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices,” Mr. Buffett wrote.
Mr. Munger is known for clever advice about investing.
“The great investors are always very careful. They think things through. They take their time. They’re calm. They’re not in a hurry. They don’t get excited. They just go after the facts, and they figure out the value. And that’s what we try to do,” reads one quote attributed to Mr. Munger.
