|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
Blue Hen Investment Club meets Warren Buffett
3:18 p.m., April 28, 2006--When two University of Delaware students strolled into Berkshire-Hathaway Inc.'s Omaha garage with legendary financier Warren Buffett on April 18, they noticed a tan Lincoln Town Car parked a little askew. Buffett, the second-richest man in the world, jumped into the driver's seat of the car (with the vanity plates reading THRIFTY), and chauffeured the students to a favorite local steakhouse. En route, UD senior Walter Reinfeld brought up the 2003 abduction of millionaire Ed Lambert and asked Buffett if he thought it was safe to drive himself. “He said if somebody abducted him, they'd have to pay to give him back,” Reinfeld said. “He left the windows down and the car unlocked when we went into the restaurant.” Reinfeld, who had approached Buffett at a Coca-Cola stockholder's meeting in Wilmington last year and asked him to speak at UD, was the driving force behind the trip that brought 28 members of the Blue Hen Investment Club and two faculty members face-to-face with the “Oracle of Omaha.” All Reinfeld got from that first meeting was a photo of Buffett jokingly handing his wallet over to him, but Reinfeld kept writing letters. He finally got word last January that Buffett had room on his schedule to host Reinfeld and friends in Omaha this month. Reinfeld said the University picked up the tab for regular members of the investment club and others paid $100 of their costs. Buffett, worth $42 billion, treated the students to his trademark steak-potato-and-Coke lunch at the steakhouse.
James B. O'Neill, the economics professor who serves as the club's faculty advisor, said he found Buffett so interesting that he picked up Roger Lowenstein's biography, The Making of an American Capitalist. “The students here got to meet a person who really has devoted his life to looking at, in a sense, undervalued companies and studying them, and, through analysis and hard work, has obviously made some prudent decisions,” O'Neill said. “But I think the other side of Mr. Buffett is that you have a very personable, down-to-earth businessman. He was just very nice. He was not rushing away. He was a very gracious host. “When you see that being presented [against the backdrop of] the Enron trial...you can see the integrity that Mr. Buffett represents down to the core. He's interested in making money, but he never forgets personal integrity and the impact his decisions have on other people.” Buffett invited all the UD students to return to Omaha May 5 for Berkshire-Hathaway's annual meeting, oft-dubbed “Woodstock for Capitalists.” Only two can make it. Reinfeld, one of the two, will graduate in May and join the DuPont Co.'s finance and accounting division in early June. “I'm still a little disappointed that Mr. Buffett didn't come here to speak,'' Reinfeld said, “but we're still working on it. We're not done with that.” Article by Kathy Canavan
|
|
|
