Newswise — Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the most successful investors of our time, is the 2007 recipient of the Berkeley Award for Distinguished Contributions to Financial Reporting.
Tom Campbell, dean of the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, announced the award before accounting professionals, standard setters, enforcers, and academics at the Haas School's 18th annual Financial Reporting Conference, being held today (Nov. 9, 2007) at the San Francisco Airport Marriott.
The Berkeley award recognizes individuals in financial reporting that have demonstrated courage, leadership, stewardship, or other meritorious performance in the interest of providing financial information useful to investors in making investment decisions.
Buffett has been an outspoken advocate for corporate governance and regulation in the accounting industry. To encourage transparent accounting, Berkshire Hathaway has published its corporate governance and accounting disclosure methods on its website. Buffett himself has served on panels such as the SEC roundtable on "Improving Financial Statement Disclosure" in March 2002. He also has donated his time to discuss proper financial disclosure in an educational video released by the Financial Accounting and Standards Board in 2001.
"Warren Buffett has been a role model for the business community and an outspoken ambassador for transparent and honest accounting practices that go beyond the letter of the law," said Solomon Darwin, executive director of the Center for Financial Reporting and Management (CFRM). "His extraordinary financial success and unprecedented philanthropic giving have shown that ethical business practices reap both financial and personal rewards."
Buffett's business career started during his childhood years in Omaha, Neb., when he made money collecting and selling golf balls and running paper routes. He traded his first stocks when he was 11. By the time he graduated from high school he owned 40 acres of Nebraskan farm land.
Buffett earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Nebraska and a master's in economics at Columbia Business School, where he studied under famed investor Benjamin Graham.
At age 25, Buffett formed his own successful investment company with funds from friends and family, which operated from 1957 until 1969. After winding down its funds, Buffett started investing in the Omaha textile company Berkshire Hathaway and acquired total control of the company in 1965. However, the market for textile companies faced challenges in exports and high manufacturing costs, and Buffett decided to diversify by acquiring two Nebraska insurance companies.
This marked the start of Buffett's interest in insurance and his rise to financial fame. Buffett His investments have averaged more than 25% in annual shareholders returns for the past 25 years, and Buffett has become one of the world's richest men.
However, Buffett has been Buffettquoted as saying that he is "not an enthusiast of dynastic wealth." In 2006, Buffetthe donated the bulk of his fortune, $37 billion, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in what is believed to be the single largest donation by an individual in the US.
The Berkeley award will be presented to Warren Buffett on November 19 by the CFRM's Solomon Darwin, who will accompany a group of 100 Haas School students on a special trip to meet Mr. Buffett in Omaha.
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