Auditing An Oracle - ' The Berkshire Player Roster '
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The Berkshire Player Roster
Insiders
Warren Buffett
Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
Arguably the world's greatest investor, Buffett comes off as a pretty ordinary guy. He lives in the same house he bought more than 40 years ago, wears plain and sometimes rumpled suits, and drinks Cherry Coke. In reality, the Omaha native has amassed a personal fortune estimated at $30.5 billion by Forbes. He is decidedly low-tech: He doesn't have a computer in his office and is reputed to not even use a calculator.
Charles Munger
Vice Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway
Like Buffett, Munger is a product of Omaha, and worked at Buffett's grandfather's store, Buffett & Son, in the 1950s. The two didn't become business partners until the mid-1970s, after Munger became a successful attorney. The straight man to Buffett's jokes, Munger is seen as the quiet but brilliant partner. Munger also is chairman of Wesco Financial, a Berkshire company, and a director of Costco Wholesale.
Marc Hamburg
Vice President, Treasurer, Berkshire Hathaway
Hamburg pulls the financials together from Berkshire's 60-odd subsidiaries. That task is probably why he is Berkshire's highest-paid employee, earning $462,500 in salary in 2002.
Walter Scott, Jr.
Chairman, Level 3 Communications
He was instrumental in convincing Buffett to give up his long-held aversion to technology companies and make a sizable investment in Level 3 Communications in 2002.
Rebecca Amick
Director of Internal Auditing, Berkshire Hathaway
Amick has been responsible for Berkshire's internal auditing since 1996, and as such, has the monolithic task of making sure the company's dozens of subsidiaries meet new accounting rules.
Outsiders
Bill Gates
Chairman, Microsoft
The two hit it off in 1991 and have since become good friends, bridge partners and even occasionally vacation together. When Gates proposed to his wife Melinda, he had his private jet detour to Omaha so he could pick out an engagement ring at Borsheim's, a Berkshire subsidiary.
Malcolm Chace
Chairman, BankRI
One of the Berkshire's longest-serving directors, Chace was an original member of the family that owned and operated the Berkshire Hathaway textile mills, purchased by Buffett in 1962.
Tom Murphy
Former Chairman, Capital Cities/ABC
Murphy was added to Berkshire's board of directors in May primarily to satisfy rules of the New York Stock Exchange, which require companies to have a majority of independent directors. The two have been longtime friends.
Donald Keough
Chairman, DMK
Like Murphy, Keough was added to the Berkshire board in May. He is a former
president of Coca-Cola.
Benjamin Graham
Mentor
Buffett credits Graham, his instructor at Columbia University's business school, with planting the value-investing seeds that grew into the Berkshire empire. Graham's best-known doctrine was to look for "cigar butts"—companies that the stock market had discarded, but still had a few good "puffs" of value left in them. Graham died in 1976.
Projects: Management 
