Well in 1962 I learned from Ben Graham how to assess businesses. He also had the cigar butt analogy for buying businesses…you can usually get one good puff out of it and it’s free. Berkshire made a lot of money after WWII (more than Pfizer and Merck) and then it steadily went downhill. Between 1955 and 1965 Berkshire went from 12 mills to 2 mills and they bought their own stock as mills closed. We bought 100,000 shares out of 1 million in 1962 at $7 3/8 and the company had $10-11/share in working capital…I knew I wouldn’t lose money because of the working capital. It was losing money but it was also liquefying assets by closing mills. Seabury Stanton was running Berkshire at the time and I went to go visit him. We had an agreement that Berkshire would tender $11-1/2 for my shares of the company. At this point, I could not buy any stock as I had inside information. A few weeks later I received a letter from Old Colony Trust containing a tender offer of $11-3/8. Early the following week, Seabury tendered the stock at 11 3/8. As result, I began buying more Berkshire. Other family members of Seabury Stanton sold their shares to me and I gained controlling interest in the company. The family members weren’t very happy with Seabury either really. We ran the mills until 1985. .
Daily Archives: February 11, 2007
Google’s Arrogance in North Carolina: Learning from AT&T?
But it turns out that there was a lot more to the story. Google leaned hard on North Carolina lawmakers and officials, not just to get the fattest deal possible but to choke off the flow of information along the way.
According to documents obtained by The News & Observer of Raleigh, the company went beyond reasonable expectations of confidentiality to demand absolute secrecy while negotiations were under way, even asking participants to sign nondisclosure agreements; some legislators and local officials did so, but Department of Commerce officials did not. Google executive Rhett Weiss badgered Commerce Secretary Jim Fain about the state’s adherence to process, complaining, for example, when lawmakers wanted an estimate of the cost to North Carolina in lost tax revenue, and threatening to kill the whole thing if Google didn’t get its way.
Businesses need some measure of confidentiality when putting together this kind of transaction. Fair enough. But this is the people’s business, and Google’s high-handedness is an affront to the people of this state.
And then there’s that whole “Don’t be evil” thing. Google spokesman Barry Schnitt told me that the company’s negotiations with the state were “very standard.” If that’s the case, and this is standard operating procedure for the company, then something has gone wrong in Silicon Valley.
Barry Orton keeps up with AT&T’s Wisconsin Lobbying.
Yet another reason to use the excellent Clusty search engine.