Morgan Housel

He had the track record and the narrative that...

if you sell your business to Berkshire, it is not going to molest it and rip it apart and sell it for parts.

It's gonna nurture it and let it grow forever.

And I think that was, and if you compare that to Blackstone, KKR, all the other private equity shops, their stated purpose, and I'm not saying this is wrong, but their stated purpose is we're gonna maximize IRR and we're gonna do whatever's necessary to get there.

Whereas Berkshire was, we are intentionally not going to maximize returns.

We could easily flip this company next year for more than we paid for it.

We could easily lay off half the staff and squeeze more net income out of it.

We're not gonna do that.

We're gonna keep this as it is and do it.

And because of that, you had businesses that would sell their company to Berkshire for less than they could have gotten from Blackstone or KKR.

Because if you are particularly a family business,

who built your business up over the years, and this was your baby.

Did you want to sell it to Blackstone for an extra 10 million bucks and have them rip it to shreds or sell it to Berkshire for a little bit less and know that he was going to nurture it for several generations?

I think that's true.

And a lot of it was not altruism.

It was he knew that he would be able to get the best terms and the best deals if he had that level of trust.

And so a lot of it was morals of just doing the right thing.

But a lot of it was this was going to accrue to him personally and to Berkshire over time.

Sure.

And I think that's where you get the best results when it's like everybody's winning here.