SH★NE

In 1962, Warren Buffett began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway after noticing a pattern in the price direction of its stock whenever the company closed a mill. Eventually, Buffett acknowledged that the textile business was waning and company’s financial situation was not going to improve. In 1964, Stanton made a verbal tender offer of $11¹⁄₂ per share for the company to buy back Buffett’s shares. Buffett agreed to the deal. A few weeks later, Buffett received the tender offer in writing, but the tender offer was for only $11³⁄₈. Buffett later admitted that this lower, undercutting offer made him angry. Instead of selling at the slightly lower price, Buffett decided to buy more of the stock to take control of the company and fire Stanton (which he did). However, this put Buffett in situation where he was now majority owner of a textile business that was failing.

In 2010, Buffett claimed that purchasing Berkshire Hathaway was the biggest investment mistake he had ever made, and claimed that it had denied him compounded investment returns of about $200 billion over the previous 45 years. Buffett claimed that had he invested that money directly in insurance businesses instead of buying out Berkshire Hathaway (due to what he perceived as a slight by an individual), those investments would have paid off several hundredfold.