Friday, May 11, 2007

Buffett Trip

Every year Warren Buffett invites a dozen business schools to visit with him in Omaha. Students each get to ask him one question during the 3-4 hour Q&A session, followed by lunch at Gorat's steakhouse. In addition, the students get to pitch a company (public or private) for him to purchase. If they are successful, each student gets 2 Berkshire-B shares and the professor will get 1 Berkshire-A share. Only one class has been successful (University of TN - Knoxville and Clayton Mobile Homes) so far.

After over a year of "persistence" I called his secretary and Emory University's Goizueta Business School will be visiting with him during the '07-'08 school year. A tad bit of irony, considering Roberto Goizueta was one of the key drivers for Buffett's large purchase of Coke stock. We will have to make sure to bring Mr. Buffett a fresh case of Cherry Coke from Atlanta.

This experience will be highly valuable for all the students. How valuable, might you ask? If we look at public comps, we see a recent transaction of a $600K Lunch With Buffett paid for by a successful Chinese entrepreneur. If we consider that we will have between 40-100 students, the trip could be worth between $24 - 60 MM. Thats definitely a great value in my book.

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