Overseeing Berkshire’s businesses

I have a friend that used to like to own 100 percent of any company that he had, because he liked to look in the mirror and say, “All my shareholders love me.” That has a nice ring to it. I like to look in the mirror and say, “Enough of my shareholders love me.” We will never allow Berkshire to become some monolith that is overrun with committees, budget presentations, and multiple layers of management. Instead, we plan to operate as a collection of separately-managed medium-sized and large businesses, most of whose decisionmaking occurs at the operating level.