Kevin Munger Popular Books

Kevin Munger Biography & Facts

Charles Thomas Munger (January 1, 1924 – November 28, 2023) was an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He was vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett. Buffett described Munger as his closest partner and right-hand man, and credited him with being the "architect" of modern Berkshire Hathaway's business philosophy. In addition to his role at Berkshire Hathaway, Munger was a founding partner of Munger, Tolles & Olson; chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 through 2011; chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California; and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation. Early life and education Charles Thomas Munger was born on January 1, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Florence "Toody" (Russell) and Alfred Case Munger, a lawyer. As a teenager, he worked at Buffett & Son, a grocery store owned by Warren Buffett's grandfather, Ernest P. Buffett. His grandfather, Thomas Charles Munger, was a state representative and later a U.S. district court judge appointed by Theodore Roosevelt. He enrolled in the University of Michigan, where he studied mathematics. During his time in college, he joined the fraternity Sigma Phi Society. In early 1943, a few days after his 19th birthday, he dropped out of college to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he became a second lieutenant. After receiving a high score on the Army General Classification Test, he was ordered to study meteorology at Caltech in Pasadena, California, the town he was to make his home. Through the G.I. Bill Munger took a number of advanced courses through several universities. When he applied to his father's alma mater, Harvard Law School, the dean of admissions rejected him because Munger had not completed an undergraduate degree. However, the dean relented after a call from Roscoe Pound, the former dean of Harvard Law and a Munger family friend. Munger excelled in law school, becoming a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and graduating in 1948 with a J.D., magna cum laude. In college and the Army, he developed "an important skill": card playing. He used this in his approach to business. "What you have to learn is to fold early when the odds are against you, or if you have a big edge, back it heavily because you don't get a big edge often. Opportunity comes, but it doesn't come often, so seize it when it does come." He also used the card analogy to explain his approach to investing. He maintained that treating the shares of a company like baseball cards is a losing strategy because it requires one to predict the behavior of often irrational and emotional human beings. Investment career Munger moved with his family to California, where he joined the law firm Wright & Garrett (later Musick, Peeler & Garrett). In 1962, he founded and worked as a real estate attorney at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. He then gave up the practice of law to concentrate on managing investments and later partnered with Otis Booth in real estate development. When he met Buffett over lunch at the Omaha Club, "the two began talking about investments and never stopped." In 1962, Munger partnered with Jack Wheeler to form Wheeler, Munger, and Company, an investment firm with a seat on the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. According to Buffett's essay "The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville", published in 1984, Munger's investment partnership generated compound annual returns of 19.8% during the 1962–75 period compared to a 5.0% annual appreciation rate for the Dow. He wound up Wheeler, Munger, and Co. in 1976, after losses of 32% in 1973 and 31% in 1974. Munger was previously the chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. The acquisition of this company was controversial following accusations that Buffett's company, Blue Chip, bought Wesco shares to defeat an impending merger between Wesco and Financial Corp. Wesco began as a savings and loan association, but eventually grew to control Precision Steel Corp., CORT Furniture Leasing, Kansas Bankers Surety Company, and other ventures. Wesco Financial also held a concentrated equity portfolio of over US$1.5 billion in companies such as Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, US Bancorp, and Goldman Sachs. Munger believed that holding a concentrated number of stocks that he knew extremely well would in the long term produce superior returns. Wesco is based in Pasadena, California, Munger's adopted hometown. Pasadena was also the site of the company's annual shareholders' meeting, which were typically held on the Wednesday or Thursday after the more famous Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Munger's meetings were nearly as legendary in the investment community as those he co-hosted with Buffett in Omaha. Such meetings were often perfunctory, but Munger interacted with the other Wesco shareholders at considerable length, sometimes speculating about what Benjamin Franklin would do in a given situation. Meeting notes have been posted on the Futile Finance? website, but no updates exist beyond 2011. Munger was also the chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation. After Wesco meetings ended, the Daily Journal annual meeting grew in importance, as investors flocked to the meeting to listen to him speak at length. Investment philosophy "Elementary, worldly wisdom" In multiple speeches, and in the 2005 book Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, "worldly wisdom" consists of a set of mental models framed as a latticework to help solve critical business problems. Munger, along with Buffett, was one of the main inspirations behind the book Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger. Author Peter Bevelin explained his key learnings from both Munger and Buffett in a 2007 interview: "How to think about businesses and investing, how to behave in life, the importance of ethics and honesty, how to approach problems but foremost how to reduce the chance of meeting problems." Bevelin stated that previously, he "was lacking the Munger ability to un-learn my own best-loved ideas". Munger stated that high ethical standards were integral to his philosophy; at the 2009 Wesco Financial Corporation annual meeting he said, "Good businesses are ethical businesses. A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail." During an interview and Q&A session at Harvard-Westlake School on January 19, 2010, Munger referred to American philosopher Charles Frankel in his discussion on the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the philosophy of responsibility. Munger explained that Frankel believed: the system is responsible in proportion to the degree that the people who make the decisions bear the consequences. So to Charlie Frankel, you don't create a loan system where all the people who make the loans promptly dump them on somebody else through lies and twaddle, and they don't bear the responsibility when the loans .... Discover the Kevin Munger popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Kevin Munger books.