2007-02-28 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders
To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:
Our gain in net worth during 2006 was $16.9 billion, which increased the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 18.4%. Over the last 42 years (that is, since present management took over) book value has grown from $19 to $70,281, a rate of 21.4% compounded annually.*
我们在2006年的净资产增加了169亿美元，使伯克希尔A类股与B类股的每股账面价值都增长了18.4%。过去42年（即现任管理层接手以来），每股账面价值从19美元增长到70,281美元，复合年增长率为21.4%。*
* All per-share figures used in this report apply to Berkshire’s A shares. Figures for the B shares are 1/30th of those shown for the A.
本报告中所有“每股”数据均以伯克希尔A类股为口径；B类股的数值为A类股的1/30。
We believe that $16.9 billion is a record for a one-year gain in net worth — more than has ever been booked by any American business, leaving aside boosts that have occurred because of mergers (e.g., AOL’s purchase of Time Warner). Of course, Exxon Mobil and other companies earn far more than Berkshire, but their earnings largely go to dividends and/or repurchases, rather than to building net worth.
我们认为，169亿美元很可能创下了美国企业“单一年份净资产增量”的纪录——撇开并购带来的账面跃升不谈（例如AOL收购Time Warner）。当然，Exxon Mobil等公司赚得远比伯克希尔多，但它们的利润大多用于分红和/或回购，而不是用来增加净资产。
All that said, a confession about our 2006 gain is in order. Our most important business, insurance, benefited from a large dose of luck: Mother Nature, bless her heart, went on vacation. After hammering us with hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 — storms that caused us to lose a bundle on super-cat insurance — she just vanished. Last year, the red ink from this activity turned black — very black.
话虽如此，关于我们2006年的增长，我得先“坦白”一件事。我们最重要的业务——保险——很大程度上受到了好运的眷顾：大自然母亲（愿她安好）去度假了。2004年和2005年飓风接连“敲打”我们——这些风暴让我们在超级巨灾保险上亏了不少——可2006年她却突然消失了。去年，这项业务的红字转成了黑字——而且黑得发亮。
In addition, the great majority of our 73 businesses did outstandingly well in 2006. Let me focus for a moment on one of our largest operations, GEICO. What management accomplished there was simply extraordinary.
此外，我们73家企业中的绝大多数在2006年都表现出色。我想用一点篇幅重点讲讲我们最大的业务之一：GEICO。管理层在那里所取得的成绩，简直非同寻常。
As I’ve told you before, Tony Nicely, GEICO’s CEO, went to work at the company 45 years ago, two months after turning 18. He became CEO in 1992, and from then on the company’s growth exploded. In addition, Tony has delivered staggering productivity gains in recent years. Between yearend 2003 and yearend 2006, the number of GEICO policies increased from 5.7 million to 8.1 million, a jump of 42%. Yet during that same period, the company’s employees (measured on a fulltime-equivalent basis) fell 3.5%. So productivity grew 47%. And GEICO didn’t start fat.
我以前跟你们说过，GEICO的CEO Tony Nicely 在45年前、刚满18岁两个月时就进入公司。他在1992年出任CEO，从那以后公司增长迅猛。此外，Tony 在近几年实现了惊人的生产率提升：从2003年末到2006年末，GEICO保单数量从570万份增至810万份，增长42%；但同期员工数量（按全职等效口径）却下降了3.5%。因此生产率提高了47%。而GEICO本来也并不臃肿。
That remarkable gain has allowed GEICO to maintain its all-important position as a low-cost producer, even though it has dramatically increased advertising expenditures. Last year GEICO spent $631 million on ads, up from $238 million in 2003 (and up from $31 million in 1995, when Berkshire took control). Today, GEICO spends far more on ads than any of its competitors, even those much larger. We will continue to raise the bar.
这份卓越的提升，使GEICO即便大幅增加广告支出，仍能维持其至关重要的“低成本生产者”地位。去年GEICO广告投入达6.31亿美元，高于2003年的2.38亿美元（也高于1995年伯克希尔取得控制权时的3,100万美元）。如今，GEICO在广告上的花费远超任何竞争对手——哪怕对手规模大得多。我们还会继续把门槛抬高。
Last year I told you that if you had a new son or grandson to be sure to name him Tony. But Don Keough, a Berkshire director, recently had a better idea. After reviewing GEICO’s performance in 2006, he wrote me, “Forget births. Tell the shareholders to immediately change the names of their present children to Tony or Antoinette.” Don signed his letter “Tony.”
去年我说过，如果你新添了儿子或孙子，一定要给他起名叫Tony。但伯克希尔董事 Don Keough 最近给了我一个更好的主意。他在回顾GEICO 2006年的表现后写信给我：“别管新生儿了。告诉股东们立刻把现有孩子的名字改成Tony或Antoinette。”Don在信末署名为“Tony”。
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Charlie Munger — my partner and Berkshire’s vice chairman — and I run what has turned out to be a big business, one with 217,000 employees and annual revenues approaching $100 billion. We certainly didn’t plan it that way. Charlie began as a lawyer, and I thought of myself as a security analyst. Sitting in those seats, we both grew skeptical about the ability of big entities of any type to function well. Size seems to make many organizations slow-thinking, resistant to change and smug. In Churchill’s words: “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Here’s a telling fact: Of the ten non-oil companies having the largest market capitalization in 1965 — titans such as General Motors, Sears, DuPont and Eastman Kodak — only one made the 2006 list.
查理·芒格——我的合伙人、伯克希尔的副董事长——和我经营着一门结果证明规模很大的生意：员工21.7万人，年收入接近1,000亿美元。我们当然不是一开始就计划成这样。查理最初是律师，我把自己当作证券分析师。坐在那样的位置上，我们俩都逐渐对任何类型的庞大机构能否良好运转产生了怀疑。规模似乎会让许多组织变得思维迟缓、抗拒变化、自满。用丘吉尔的话说：“我们塑造建筑，随后建筑塑造我们。”这里有个很能说明问题的事实：1965年市值最大的十家非石油公司——像General Motors、Sears、DuPont、Eastman Kodak这样的巨头——到了2006年的榜单里只剩下一家。
In fairness, we’ve seen plenty of successes as well, some truly outstanding. There are many giant-company managers whom I greatly admire; Ken Chenault of American Express, Jeff Immelt of G.E. and Dick Kovacevich of Wells Fargo come quickly to mind. But I don’t think I could do the management job they do. And I know I wouldn’t enjoy many of the duties that come with their positions — meetings, speeches, foreign travel, the charity circuit and governmental relations. For me, Ronald Reagan had it right: “It’s probably true that hard work never killed anyone — but why take the chance?”
公平地说，我们也见过不少成功案例，其中一些确实卓越。我非常钦佩许多大公司经理人；American Express 的 Ken Chenault、G.E. 的 Jeff Immelt、Wells Fargo 的 Dick Kovacevich 立刻就浮现在脑海。但我不认为我能胜任他们那种管理工作。我也知道，我不会享受他们职位附带的许多职责——会议、演讲、海外旅行、慈善活动的社交圈以及政府关系。对我来说，Ronald Reagan 说得对：“辛苦工作大概从没害死过谁——但何必冒这个险呢？”
So I’ve taken the easy route, just sitting back and working through great managers who run their own shows. My only tasks are to cheer them on, sculpt and harden our corporate culture, and make major capital-allocation decisions. Our managers have returned this trust by working hard and effectively.
所以我走了条“轻松”的路：坐在后排，通过那些能干的经理人来运转，他们各自把自己的生意办得风生水起。我的任务只有三项：为他们加油打气；雕刻并强化我们的企业文化；以及做出重大的资本配置决策。我们的经理人也用努力且高效的工作回报了这份信任。
For their performance over the last 42 years — and particularly for 2006 — Charlie and I thank them.
为他们过去42年的表现——尤其是2006年的表现——查理和我向他们致谢。
Yardsticks
衡量标尺
Charlie and I measure Berkshire’s progress and evaluate its intrinsic value in a number of ways. No single criterion is effective in doing these jobs, and even an avalanche of statistics will not capture some factors that are important. For example, it’s essential that we have managers much younger than I available to succeed me. Berkshire has never been in better shape in this regard — but I can’t prove it to you with numbers.
查理和我用多种方式衡量伯克希尔的进展，并评估其内在价值。没有任何单一指标能把这两件事做好；即使堆成“统计雪崩”，也抓不住一些关键因素。比如，必须确保我退休后有人接班，而这些接班人要比我年轻得多。就这一点而言，伯克希尔从未像现在这样准备充分——但我没法用数字向你证明。
There are two statistics, however, that are of real importance. The first is the amount of investments (including cash and cash-equivalents) that we own on a per-share basis. Arriving at this figure, we exclude investments held in our finance operation because these are largely offset by borrowings. Here’s the record since present management acquired control of Berkshire:
不过，有两项统计数据确实非常重要。第一项，是我们按“每股”口径拥有的投资资产规模（包括现金和现金等价物）。在计算这个数字时，我们会剔除金融业务里持有的投资，因为这些投资在很大程度上被相应的借款所抵消。以下是现任管理层取得伯克希尔控制权以来的记录：
In our early years we put most of our retained earnings and insurance float into investments in marketable securities. Because of this emphasis, and because the securities we purchased generally did well, our growth rate in investments was for a long time quite high.
在早期，我们把大部分留存收益和保险浮存金都投入到可交易证券（有价证券）上。由于这种侧重，加上我们买入的证券整体表现不错，我们的投资资产增长率在很长一段时间里都相当高。
Over the years, however, we have focused more and more on the acquisition of operating businesses. Using our funds for these purchases has both slowed our growth in investments and accelerated our gains in pre-tax earnings from non-insurance businesses, the second yardstick we use. Here’s how those earnings have looked:
但随着时间推移，我们越来越把重点放在收购经营性企业上。把资金用于这些收购，一方面放缓了投资资产的增长，另一方面则加速了我们从非保险业务获得的税前盈利增长——这就是我们使用的第二把标尺。下面是这些盈利的表现：
Last year we had a good increase in non-insurance earnings — 38%. Large gains from here on in, though, will come only if we are able to make major, and sensible, acquisitions. That will not be easy. We do, however, have one advantage: More and more, Berkshire has become “the buyer of choice” for business owners and managers. Initially, we were viewed that way only in the U.S. (and more often than not by private companies). We’ve long wanted, nonetheless, to extend Berkshire’s appeal beyond U.S. borders. And last year, our globe-trotting finally got underway.
去年，我们的非保险业务盈利增长得不错——达到38%。但从今往后，要想再出现大幅增长，只能依靠我们完成“规模重大且合理”的收购。这并不容易。不过，我们确实有一个优势：越来越多的企业主和经理人把伯克希尔视为“首选买家”。起初，这种认同只发生在美国（而且多半来自私营公司）。尽管如此，我们一直希望把伯克希尔的吸引力扩展到美国之外。去年，我们终于开始“环球出差”了。
这几年一直在谈论衡量标尺的问题，非常有效率的注意力。
Acquisitions
收购
We began 2006 by completing the three acquisitions pending at yearend 2005, spending about $6 billion for PacifiCorp, Business Wire and Applied Underwriters. All are performing very well.
我们在2006年初完成了2005年年底尚在进行中的三笔收购，分别以约60亿美元拿下PacifiCorp、Business Wire和Applied Underwriters。它们都表现得非常好。
The highlight of the year, however, was our July 5th acquisition of most of ISCAR, an Israeli company, and our new association with its chairman, Eitan Wertheimer, and CEO, Jacob Harpaz. The story here began on October 25, 2005, when I received a 1¼-page letter from Eitan, of whom I then knew nothing. The letter began, “I am writing to introduce you to ISCAR,” and proceeded to describe a cutting-tool business carried on in 61 countries. Then Eitan wrote, “We have for some time considered the issues of generational transfer and ownership that are typical for large family enterprises, and have given much thought to ISCAR’s future. Our conclusion is that Berkshire Hathaway would be the ideal home for ISCAR. We believe that ISCAR would continue to thrive as a part of your portfolio of businesses.”
然而，本年度的亮点是：7月5日，我们收购了以色列公司ISCAR的大部分股权，并与其董事长Eitan Wertheimer及CEO Jacob Harpaz建立了新的合作关系。故事要从2005年10月25日说起：我收到Eitan寄来的一封1又1/4页的信，而当时我对他一无所知。信开头写道：“我写信是想向您介绍ISCAR”，接着描述了一家在61个国家开展业务的切削刀具公司。随后Eitan写道：“我们一段时间以来一直在考虑大型家族企业普遍面临的代际传承与所有权问题，并对ISCAR的未来进行了深入思考。我们的结论是：Berkshire Hathaway将是ISCAR最理想的归宿。我们相信ISCAR作为您业务组合的一部分，将继续蓬勃发展。”
Overall, Eitan’s letter made the quality of the company and the character of its management leap off the page. It also made me want to learn more, and in November, Eitan, Jacob and ISCAR’s CFO, Danny Goldman, came to Omaha. A few hours with them convinced me that if we were to make a deal, we would be teaming up with extraordinarily talented managers who could be trusted to run the business after a sale with all of the energy and dedication that they had exhibited previously. However, having never bought a business based outside of the U.S. (though I had bought a number of foreign stocks), I needed to get educated on some tax and jurisdictional matters. With that task completed, Berkshire purchased 80% of ISCAR for $4 billion. The remaining 20% stays in the hands of the Wertheimer family, making it our valued partner.
总体而言，Eitan的来信让公司质量和管理层品格几乎“跃然纸上”。这也让我想进一步了解。于是11月，Eitan、Jacob以及ISCAR的CFO Danny Goldman来到奥马哈。与他们相处几个小时就让我确信：如果成交，我们将与一群极其有才干、而且可以信赖的经理人并肩，他们在出售之后仍会以此前同样的热情与投入去经营业务。不过，由于我从未收购过一家位于美国之外的公司（尽管我买过不少外国股票），我需要先补课一些税务与司法管辖方面的问题。完成这些功课后，伯克希尔以40亿美元收购ISCAR 80%的股权。剩余20%仍由Wertheimer家族持有，成为我们珍视的合伙人。
ISCAR’s products are small, consumable cutting tools that are used in conjunction with large and expensive machine tools. It’s a business without magic except for that imparted by the people who run it. But Eitan, Jacob and their associates are true managerial magicians who constantly develop tools that make their customers’ machines more productive. The result: ISCAR makes money because it enables its customers to make more money. There is no better recipe for continued success.
ISCAR的产品是体积小、可消耗的切削刀具，通常与大型且昂贵的机床配合使用。这门生意本身没什么“魔法”，除了经营它的人所带来的魔法。但Eitan、Jacob以及他们的同事是真正的管理“魔术师”，他们不断开发新工具，让客户的机器更高效。结果是：ISCAR赚钱，是因为它能让客户赚更多钱。没有比这更好的持续成功配方。
In September, Charlie and I, along with five Berkshire associates, visited ISCAR in Israel. We — and I mean every one of us — have never been more impressed with any operation. At ISCAR, as throughout Israel, brains and energy are ubiquitous. Berkshire shareholders are lucky to have joined with Eitan, Jacob, Danny and their talented associates.
9月，查理和我以及五位伯克希尔同事访问了以色列的ISCAR。我们——而且我是指我们每一个人——从未对任何一家企业的运营留下过如此深刻的印象。在ISCAR，乃至整个以色列，聪明才智与旺盛能量无处不在。伯克希尔股东很幸运，能与Eitan、Jacob、Danny以及他们才华横溢的同事们结成伙伴关系。
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A few months later, Berkshire again became “the buyer of choice” in a deal brought to us by my friend, John Roach, of Fort Worth. John, many of you will remember, was Chairman of Justin Industries, which we bought in 2000. At that time John was helping John Justin, who was terminally ill, find a permanent home for his company. John Justin died soon after we bought Justin Industries, but it has since been run exactly as we promised him it would be.
几个月后，经由我在Fort Worth的朋友John Roach牵线，伯克希尔在另一笔交易中再次成为“首选买家”。很多股东会记得John：他曾是Justin Industries的董事长，我们在2000年收购了那家公司。当时John正在帮助身患绝症的John Justin为公司寻找一个永久的归宿。我们买下Justin Industries不久，John Justin便去世了，但此后公司一直完全按照我们当初向他承诺的方式在经营。
Visiting me in November, John Roach brought along Paul Andrews, Jr., owner of about 80% of TTI, a Fort Worth distributor of electronic components. Over a 35-year period, Paul built TTI from $112,000 of sales to $1.3 billion. He is a remarkable entrepreneur and operator.
11月来访时，John Roach还带来了Paul Andrews, Jr.——他拥有TTI约80%的股权。TTI是一家位于Fort Worth的电子元器件分销商。35年间，Paul把TTI从11.2万美元的销售额做到了13亿美元。他是一位非凡的企业家和经营者。
Paul, 64, loves running his business. But not long ago he happened to witness how disruptive the death of a founder can be both to a private company’s employees and the owner’s family. What starts out as disruptive, furthermore, often evolves into destructive. About a year ago, therefore, Paul began to think about selling TTI. His goal was to put his business in the hands of an owner he had carefully chosen, rather than allowing a trust officer or lawyer to conduct an auction after his death.
64岁的Paul热爱经营自己的生意。但不久前，他亲眼看到：创始人去世会给一家私营公司的员工以及所有者家庭带来多么巨大的扰动。而且，最初只是“扰动”的事情，往往会进一步演变成“破坏”。因此，大约一年前，Paul开始考虑出售TTI。他的目标是：把企业交到自己精心挑选的所有者手里，而不是等他去世后让信托经理或律师来主持拍卖。
Paul rejected the idea of a “strategic” buyer, knowing that in the pursuit of “synergies,” an owner of that type would be apt to dismantle what he had so carefully built, a move that would uproot hundreds of his associates (and perhaps wound TTI’s business in the process). He also ruled out a private equity firm, which would very likely load the company with debt and then flip it as soon as possible.
Paul首先排除了“战略买家”。他知道这类买家为了追求所谓“协同效应”，很可能会拆解他辛苦建立的一切——这会让数百名同事被迫“连根拔起”（而且过程中也许会伤到TTI的业务）。他也排除了私募股权基金，因为后者很可能会给公司加上沉重负债，然后尽快倒手卖出。
That left Berkshire. Paul and I met on the morning of November 15th and made a deal before lunch. Later he wrote me: “After our meeting, I am confident that Berkshire is the right owner for TTI . . . I am proud of our past and excited about our future.” And so are Charlie and I.
最后就只剩伯克希尔。11月15日早晨，Paul和我见面；午饭前我们就谈成了交易。之后他写信给我：“会面之后，我确信伯克希尔是TTI正确的所有者……我为过去感到自豪，也对未来充满期待。”查理和我也是如此。
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We also made some “tuck-in” acquisitions during 2006 at Fruit of the Loom (“Fruit”), MiTek, CTB, Shaw and Clayton. Fruit made the largest purchases. First, it bought Russell Corp., a leading producer of athletic apparel and uniforms for about $1.2 billion (including assumed debt) and in December it agreed to buy the intimate apparel business of VF Corp. Together, these acquisitions add about $2.2 billion to Fruit’s sales and bring with them about 23,000 employees.
我们在2006年还做了一些“补强型（tuck-in）”收购，发生在Fruit of the Loom（“Fruit”）、MiTek、CTB、Shaw和Clayton这些公司之下。其中，Fruit的收购规模最大。它先是以约12亿美元（含承担债务）收购了Russell Corp.——一家领先的运动服饰与制服生产商；随后在12月又同意收购VF Corp.的贴身衣物业务。合计下来，这两笔收购为Fruit增加了约22亿美元的销售额，并带来约23,000名员工。
Charlie and I love it when we can acquire businesses that can be placed under managers, such as John Holland at Fruit, who have already shown their stuff at Berkshire. MiTek, for example, has made 14 acquisitions since we purchased it in 2001, and Gene Toombs has delivered results from these deals far in excess of what he had predicted. In effect, we leverage the managerial talent already with us by these tuck-in deals. We will make many more.
查理和我很喜欢这样的收购：把收来的业务放到已经在伯克希尔证明过自己的经理人手下——比如Fruit的John Holland。再比如MiTek：自我们2001年收购它以来，已经完成了14笔收购，而Gene Toombs从这些交易中交出的成绩，远远超过他当初的预期。实际上，通过这些“补强型”交易，我们是在放大（杠杆化）伯克希尔现有的管理人才。以后我们还会做很多。
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We continue, however, to need “elephants” in order for us to use Berkshire’s flood of incoming cash. Charlie and I must therefore ignore the pursuit of mice and focus our acquisition efforts on much bigger game.
不过，我们仍然需要“elephants（大象级并购）”，才能消化伯克希尔源源不断涌入的现金。也因此，查理和我必须忽略“追老鼠”，把收购火力集中到更大的猎物上。
Our exemplar is the older man who crashed his grocery cart into that of a much younger fellow while both were shopping. The elderly man explained apologetically that he had lost track of his wife and was preoccupied searching for her. His new acquaintance said that by coincidence his wife had also wandered off and suggested that it might be more efficient if they jointly looked for the two women. Agreeing, the older man asked his new companion what his wife looked like. “She’s a gorgeous blonde,” the fellow answered, “with a body that would cause a bishop to go through a stained glass window, and she’s wearing tight white shorts. How about yours?” The senior citizen wasted no words: “Forget her, we’ll look for yours.”
我们最喜欢用来打比方的，是这样一个故事：一位上了年纪的男人在超市购物时，不小心把购物车撞上了一个年轻人的购物车。老人连忙道歉，说自己把妻子跟丢了，正分心到处找她。年轻人说巧了，他妻子也走散了，不如两人一起找，效率更高。老人同意后，问对方妻子长什么样。年轻人回答：“她是个迷人的金发美女，身材好到能让一位主教穿过彩色玻璃窗去追她，而且她穿着紧身白短裤。那你的呢？”老人一句废话没有：“别找我的了，我们找你的。”
What we are looking for is described on page 25. If you have an acquisition candidate that fits, call me — day or night. And then watch me shatter a stained glass window.
我们要找的目标，在第25页有描述。如果你有符合条件的并购对象，随时给我打电话——白天或夜里都行。然后看我把一扇彩绘玻璃窗撞得粉碎。
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Now, let’s examine the four major operating sectors of Berkshire. Lumping their financial figures together impedes analysis. So we’ll look at them as four separate businesses, starting with the all— important insurance group.
现在，让我们来看看伯克希尔的四大经营板块。把它们的财务数字混在一起会妨碍分析，所以我们把它们当作四家独立的企业来看，从最重要的保险集团开始。
Insurance
保险
Next month marks the 40th anniversary of our entrance into the insurance business. It was on March 9, 1967, that Berkshire purchased National Indemnity and its companion company, National Fire & Marine, from Jack Ringwalt for $8.6 million.
下个月是我们进入保险业40周年。1967年3月9日，伯克希尔以860万美元从Jack Ringwalt手中买下了National Indemnity及其姊妹公司National Fire & Marine。
Jack was a long-time friend of mine and an excellent, but somewhat eccentric, businessman. For about ten minutes every year he would get the urge to sell his company. But those moods — perhaps brought on by a tiff with regulators or an unfavorable jury verdict — quickly vanished.
Jack是我多年的朋友，是一位出色但有点古怪的商人。每年大概有十分钟，他会突然产生把公司卖掉的冲动。但这种情绪——也许是和监管者拌嘴，或陪审团判决不利所引发——很快就会消散。
In the mid-1960s, I asked investment banker Charlie Heider, a mutual friend of mine and Jack’s, to alert me the next time Jack was “in heat.” When Charlie’s call came, I sped to meet Jack. We made a deal in a few minutes, with me waiving an audit, “due diligence” or anything else that would give Jack an opportunity to reconsider. We just shook hands, and that was that.
在20世纪60年代中期，我请投资银行家Charlie Heider——他是我和Jack的共同朋友——下次Jack“发情”（想卖公司）时务必通知我。等Charlie的电话一来，我立刻飞奔去见Jack。我们几分钟内就把交易谈妥，我放弃了审计、“尽职调查”以及任何可能让Jack有机会反悔的程序。我们只是握了握手，事情就定了。
When we were due to close the purchase at Charlie’s office, Jack was late. Finally arriving, he explained that he had been driving around looking for a parking meter with some unexpired time. That was a magic moment for me. I knew then that Jack was going to be my kind of manager.
等到Charlie的办公室要办理交割时，Jack迟到了。终于到了之后，他解释说自己一直在开车找一个“剩余停车时间还没用完”的停车计时器。那一刻对我来说像是“灵光乍现”。我当时就知道，Jack会是我喜欢的那种经理人。
正确的思维方式很难形成，形成了也很难改变。
When Berkshire purchased Jack’s two insurers, they had “float” of $17 million. We’ve regularly offered a long explanation of float in earlier reports, which you can read on our website. Simply put, float is money we hold that is not ours but which we get to invest.
当伯克希尔买下Jack的两家保险公司时，它们的“float（浮存金）”是1,700万美元。我们在以往的报告里多次对float作过很长的解释，你可以在我们的网站上读到。简单说，float就是：我们暂时持有、但并不属于我们的资金，而我们却可以拿来投资。
At the end of 2006, our float had grown to $50.9 billion, and we have since written a huge retroactive reinsurance contract with Equitas — which I will describe in the next section — that boosts float by another $7 billion. Much of the gain we’ve made has come through our acquisition of other insurers, but we’ve also had outstanding internal growth, particularly at Ajit Jain’s amazing reinsurance operation. Naturally, I had no notion in 1967 that our float would develop as it has. There’s much to be said for just putting one foot in front of the other every day.
到2006年底，我们的float已经增长到509亿美元；此后我们又与Equitas签下了一份规模巨大的追溯再保险合同——我会在下一节里说明——这份合同又把float增加了约70亿美元。我们取得的大部分增长来自收购其他保险公司，但我们也实现了出色的内部增长，尤其是Ajit Jain那令人惊叹的再保险业务。1967年时，我当然完全想不到float会发展到今天这样。很多时候，只要每天把一只脚放到另一只脚前面，持续往前走，就能走出一条大路。
The float from retroactive reinsurance contracts, of which we have many, automatically drifts down over time. Therefore, it will be difficult for us to increase float in the future unless we make new acquisitions in the insurance field. Whatever its size, however, the all-important cost of Berkshire’s float over time is likely to be significantly below that of the industry, perhaps even falling to less than zero. Note the words “over time.” There will be bad years periodically. You can be sure of that.
我们做了很多追溯再保险（retroactive reinsurance）合同，这类合同带来的浮存金会随着时间自动逐步下降。因此，除非我们在保险领域进行新的收购，否则未来想继续增加浮存金会很难。不过，无论浮存金规模多大，伯克希尔浮存金的“成本”（长期来看）很可能显著低于行业水平，甚至可能低到零以下。请注意我说的是“长期来看”。中间会周期性出现糟糕年份——这一点你可以确信。
In 2006, though, everything went right in insurance — really right. Our managers — Tony Nicely (GEICO), Ajit Jain (B-H Reinsurance), Joe Brandon and Tad Montross (General Re), Don Wurster (National Indemnity Primary), Tom Nerney (U.S. Liability), Tim Kenesey (Medical Protective), Rod Eldred (Homestate Companies and Cypress), Sid Ferenc and Steve Menzies (Applied Underwriters), John Kizer (Central States) and Don Towle (Kansas Bankers Surety) — simply shot the lights out. When I recite their names, I feel as if I’m at Cooperstown, reading from the Hall of Fame roster. Of course, the overall insurance industry also had a terrific year in 2006. But our managers delivered results generally superior to those of their competitors.
但在2006年，保险业务一切都顺得不得了——真的非常顺。我们的经理人——Tony Nicely（GEICO）、Ajit Jain（B-H Reinsurance）、Joe Brandon和Tad Montross（General Re）、Don Wurster（National Indemnity Primary）、Tom Nerney（U.S. Liability）、Tim Kenesey（Medical Protective）、Rod Eldred（Homestate Companies and Cypress）、Sid Ferenc和Steve Menzies（Applied Underwriters）、John Kizer（Central States）以及Don Towle（Kansas Bankers Surety）——简直是“火力全开”。每当我把他们的名字念一遍，都感觉自己像在库珀斯敦（Cooperstown）读棒球名人堂的名单。当然，整个保险行业在2006年也过了个非常棒的年份。但我们的经理人交出的成绩总体上仍优于竞争对手。
Below is the tally on our underwriting and float for each major sector of insurance. Enjoy the view, because you won’t soon see another like it.
下面是我们各主要保险板块承保结果与浮存金的汇总。好好欣赏这幅景象吧，因为你很难在短期内再看到类似的。
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In 2007, our results from the bread-and-butter lines of insurance will deteriorate, though I think they will remain satisfactory. The big unknown is super-cat insurance. Were the terrible hurricane seasons of 2004-05 aberrations? Or were they our planet’s first warning that the climate of the 21st Century will differ materially from what we’ve seen in the past? If the answer to the second question is yes, 2006 will soon be perceived as a misleading period of calm preceding a series of devastating storms. These could rock the insurance industry. It’s naïve to think of Katrina as anything close to a worst-case event.
在2007年，我们在保险“基本盘”业务上的结果会走弱，不过我认为仍会令人满意。最大的未知数在于超级巨灾保险（super-cat insurance）。2004-05年那两季惨烈的飓风，是偶发异常吗？还是地球在向我们发出第一个警告：21世纪的气候将与过去显著不同？如果第二个问题的答案是“是”，那么2006年很快就会被视为一种具有误导性的短暂平静——它只是毁灭性风暴连番来袭之前的“风平浪静”。这些风暴可能会撼动整个保险业。把Katrina当作接近“最坏情形”的事件，是天真的。
Neither Ajit Jain, who manages our super-cat operation, nor I know what lies ahead. We do know that it would be a huge mistake to bet that evolving atmospheric changes are benign in their implications for insurers.
无论是负责我们超级巨灾业务的Ajit Jain，还是我，都不知道未来会怎样。但我们知道：如果押注“正在演变的大气变化对保险公司影响温和”，那将是一个巨大的错误。
Don’t think, however, that we have lost our taste for risk. We remain prepared to lose $6 billion in a single event, if we have been paid appropriately for assuming that risk. We are not willing, though, to take on even very small exposures at prices that don’t reflect our evaluation of loss probabilities. Appropriate prices don’t guarantee profits in any given year, but inappropriate prices most certainly guarantee eventual losses. Rates have recently fallen because a flood of capital has entered the super-cat field. We have therefore sharply reduced our wind exposures. Our behavior here parallels that which we employ in financial markets: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.
但别以为我们从此就不敢冒险了。只要我们为承担风险得到了合理的报酬，我们仍愿意在单一事件中承受60亿美元的损失。不过，我们不愿意以不符合我们对损失概率评估的价格，去承担哪怕很小的风险暴露。合理的价格并不保证某一年一定盈利，但不合理的价格几乎可以肯定会导致最终亏损。最近，由于大量资本涌入超级巨灾领域，费率下滑。于是我们大幅削减了风暴（wind）风险暴露。我们在这里的行为与金融市场中的做法一致：别人贪婪时要恐惧，别人恐惧时要贪婪。
Lloyd’s, Equitas and Retroactive Reinsurance
Lloyd’s、Equitas与追溯再保险
Last year — we are getting now to Equitas — Berkshire agreed to enter into a huge retroactive reinsurance contract, a policy that protects an insurer against losses that have already happened, but whose cost is not yet known. I’ll give you details of the agreement shortly. But let’s first take a journey through insurance history, following the route that led to our deal.
去年——我们现在要讲到Equitas了——伯克希尔同意签下一份规模巨大的追溯再保险合同。这种保单的作用是：为保险公司提供保护，覆盖那些“已经发生、但最终成本尚未确定”的损失。我很快会给你这份协议的细节。但在此之前，让我们先做一次保险史的旅行，沿着通往这笔交易的路线走一遍。
Our tale begins around 1688, when Edward Lloyd opened a small coffee house in London. Though no Starbucks, his shop was destined to achieve worldwide fame because of the commercial activities of its clientele — shipowners, merchants and venturesome British capitalists. As these parties sipped Edward’s brew, they began to write contracts transferring the risk of a disaster at sea from the owners of ships and their cargo to the capitalists, who wagered that a given voyage would be completed without incident. These capitalists eventually became known as “underwriters at Lloyd’s.”
我们的故事始于大约1688年，当时Edward Lloyd在伦敦开了一家小咖啡馆。虽然比不上Starbucks，但这家店注定会因为来客的商业活动而名扬天下——来者包括船主、商人以及敢于冒险的英国资本家。人们一边喝着Edward的咖啡，一边开始写合同：把海上灾难风险从船舶与货物的所有者，转移给那些资本家；资本家下注某次航行会平安完成。后来，这些资本家被称为“Lloyd’s的承保人（underwriters at Lloyd’s）”。
Though many people believe Lloyd’s to be an insurance company, that is not the case. It is instead a place where many member-insurers transact business, just as they did centuries ago.
很多人以为Lloyd’s是一家保险公司，但事实并非如此。它更像一个“交易场所”：许多成员型保险人（member-insurers）在这里开展业务，方式与几百年前并无本质差别。
Over time, the underwriters solicited passive investors to join in syndicates. Additionally, the business broadened beyond marine risks into every imaginable form of insurance, including exotic coverages that spread the fame of Lloyd’s far and wide. The underwriters left the coffee house, found grander quarters and formalized some rules of association. And those persons who passively backed the underwriters became known as “names.”
随着时间推移，这些承保人邀请被动投资者加入各个辛迪加（syndicates）。此外，业务也从海运风险扩展到几乎所有可想象的保险形式，包括一些“奇特”的保障范围，使Lloyd’s的名声远播。承保人离开了咖啡馆，搬进更宏伟的场所，并把一些协会规则制度化。而那些以被动方式为承保人提供资金支持的人，则被称为“names”。
Eventually, the names came to include many thousands of people from around the world, who joined expecting to pick up some extra change without effort or serious risk. True, prospective names were always solemnly told that they would have unlimited and everlasting liability for the consequences of their syndicate’s underwriting — “down to the last cufflink,” as the quaint description went. But that warning came to be viewed as perfunctory. Three hundred years of retained cufflinks acted as a powerful sedative to the names poised to sign up.
后来，“names”这个群体扩展到全球数以千计的人。他们加入时都以为：不用费什么力、也不用承担什么大风险，就能捡点零花钱。确实，所有候选的names都会被郑重告知：他们要对所在辛迪加（syndicate）的承保后果承担“无限且永久的责任”——用一种古怪的说法就是，“连最后一枚袖扣都要赔进去”。但这句警告后来被当成了走过场。三百年来袖扣一直留在身上，这种“历史记录”像强效镇静剂一样，让准备签字的names彻底放松了警惕。
Then came asbestos. When its prospective costs were added to the tidal wave of environmental and product claims that surfaced in the 1980s, Lloyd’s began to implode. Policies written decades earlier — and largely forgotten about — were developing huge losses. No one could intelligently estimate their total, but it was certain to be many tens of billions of dollars. The specter of unending and unlimited losses terrified existing names and scared away prospects. Many names opted for bankruptcy; some even chose suicide.
然后，石棉（asbestos）来了。当石棉潜在成本再叠加上1980年代涌现的环境与产品责任索赔潮，Lloyd’s开始崩塌。几十年前签下、几乎早已被遗忘的保单，正在形成巨额亏损。没人能理性估算总额，但可以确定会是数百亿美元级别。“无穷无尽、且无上限的损失”阴影把既有的names吓坏了，也把潜在的新names吓跑了。许多names选择破产；有些甚至选择自杀。
From these shambles, there came a desperate effort to resuscitate Lloyd’s. In 1996, the powers that be at the institution allotted £11.1 billion to a new company, Equitas, and made it responsible for paying all claims on policies written before 1993. In effect, this plan pooled the misery of the many syndicates in trouble. Of course, the money allotted could prove to be insufficient — and if that happened, the names remained liable for the shortfall.
在这堆残骸中，人们开始拼命设法让Lloyd’s起死回生。1996年，机构决策者划拨了111亿英镑给一家新公司Equitas，并让它负责支付所有1993年之前承保的保单所产生的索赔。实际上，这个方案把许多陷入困境的辛迪加的痛苦“打包”到了一处。当然，这笔拨款可能不够——如果不够，缺口仍由names承担。
国内国有银行上市前的打包处理是一样的方法。
But the new plan, by concentrating all of the liabilities in one place, had the advantage of eliminating much of the costly intramural squabbling that went on among syndicates. Moreover, the pooling allowed claims evaluation, negotiation and litigation to be handled more intelligently than had been the case previously. Equitas embraced Ben Franklin’s thinking: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall hang separately.”
不过，新方案把所有负债集中在一个主体之下，有一个显著好处：它消除了辛迪加之间大量昂贵的内耗争吵。此外，“集中+池化”也使得索赔评估、谈判以及诉讼处理，比过去更理性、更有组织。Equitas拥抱了本杰明·富兰克林的思路：“我们必须团结一致，否则必将各自上绞刑架。”
From the start, many people predicted Equitas would eventually fail. But as Ajit and I reviewed the facts in the spring of 2006 — 13 years after the last exposed policy had been written and after the payment of £11.3 billion in claims — we concluded that the patient was likely to survive. And so we decided to offer a huge reinsurance policy to Equitas.
从一开始，很多人就预测Equitas最终会失败。但在2006年春天，Ajit和我复盘事实时——距离最后一份暴露风险的保单签出已13年，并且已经支付了113亿英镑索赔之后——我们判断这个“病人”大概率能活下来。于是，我们决定向Equitas提供一份规模巨大的再保险保单。
Because plenty of imponderables continue to exist, Berkshire could not provide Equitas, and its 27,972 names, unlimited protection. But we said — and I’m simplifying — that if Equitas would give us $7.12 billion in cash and securities (this is the float I spoke about), we would pay all of its future claims and expenses up to $13.9 billion. That amount was $5.7 billion above what Equitas had recently guessed its ultimate liabilities to be. Thus the names received a huge — and almost certainly sufficient — amount of future protection against unpleasant surprises. Indeed the protection is so large that Equitas plans a cash payment to its thousands of names, an event few of them had ever dreamed possible.
由于仍存在大量不可测因素，伯克希尔不可能为Equitas及其27,972位names提供“无限兜底”的保障。但我们提出——我把条款简化一下——如果Equitas给我们71.2亿美元的现金与证券（这就是我前面提到的浮存金），我们将支付其未来所有索赔与费用，最高额度为139亿美元。这个上限比Equitas当时最新估计的最终负债还高出57亿美元。于是，names获得了一份巨额——而且几乎可以肯定足够——的未来保护，以应对那些令人不快的意外。事实上，这份保护大到Equitas计划向成千上万名names进行现金返还——这是他们中极少数人曾经敢想的事情。
50年翻1倍，明摆着可以做担又有谁能做这个生意？
And how will Berkshire fare? That depends on how much “known” claims will end up costing us, how many yet-to-be-presented claims will surface and what they will cost, how soon claim payments will be made and how much we earn on the cash we receive before it must be paid out. Ajit and I think the odds are in our favor. And should we be wrong, Berkshire can handle it.
那伯克希尔会怎样？这取决于：已“已知”的索赔最终要花我们多少钱；还有多少尚未提出的索赔会浮出水面、成本几何；索赔支付会在多快的节奏发生；以及在我们收到的现金被支付出去之前，我们能赚到多少投资收益。Ajit和我认为胜算在我们这边。即使我们判断错了，伯克希尔也扛得住。
Scott Moser, the CEO of Equitas, summarized the transaction neatly: “Names wanted to sleep easy at night, and we think we’ve just bought them the world’s best mattress.”
Equitas的CEO Scott Moser用一句话把这笔交易概括得很到位：“Names想要晚上睡得踏实，我们觉得自己刚刚给他们买到了全世界最好的床垫。”
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Warning: It’s time to eat your broccoli — I am now going to talk about accounting matters. I owe this to those Berkshire shareholders who love reading about debits and credits. I hope both of you find this discussion helpful. All others can skip this section; there will be no quiz.
警告：该吃西兰花了——我现在要开始谈会计事项。我之所以这么做，是为了照顾那些喜欢读借方贷方的伯克希尔股东。我希望你们两位觉得这段讨论有帮助。其他人可以跳过这一节；不会有随堂测验。
Berkshire has done many retroactive transactions — in both number and amount a multiple of such policies entered into by any other insurer. We are the reinsurer of choice for these coverages because the obligations that are transferred to us — for example, lifetime indemnity and medical payments to be made to injured workers — may not be fully satisfied for 50 years or more. No other company can offer the certainty that Berkshire can, in terms of guaranteeing the full and fair settlement of these obligations. This fact is important to the original insurer, policyholders and regulators.
伯克希尔做过很多追溯型交易（retroactive transactions）——无论数量还是金额，都远远超过任何其他保险公司所做的同类保单。我们之所以成为这类保障的“首选再保险人（reinsurer of choice）”，是因为转移给我们的义务——例如对受伤工人终身的赔偿与医疗支付——可能要50年甚至更久才能完全履行完毕。没有任何其他公司能像伯克希尔这样，在“保证这些义务得到完整且公平的履行”方面提供同等确定性。对原始承保公司、投保人和监管者来说，这一点至关重要。
The accounting procedure for retroactive transactions is neither well known nor intuitive. The best way for shareholders to understand it, therefore, is for us to simply lay out the debits and credits. Charlie and I would like to see this done more often. We sometimes encounter accounting footnotes about important transactions that leave us baffled, and we go away suspicious that the reporting company wished it that way. (For example, try comprehending transactions “described” in the old 10-Ks of Enron, even after you know how the movie ended.)
追溯型交易的会计处理既不为人熟知，也不直观。因此，股东理解它的最好方式，是我们把借方贷方直接摊开讲清楚。查理和我希望这种做法能更常见。我们有时会读到一些关于重要交易的会计附注，读完仍一头雾水，于是难免怀疑：披露公司是不是“就希望你看不懂”。（比如去试着理解Enron旧10-K里那些所谓“描述”的交易——哪怕你已经知道电影结局是什么。）
So let us summarize our accounting for the Equitas transaction. The major debits will be to Cash and Investments, Reinsurance Recoverable, and Deferred Charges for Reinsurance Assumed (“DCRA”). The major credit will be to Reserve for Losses and Loss Adjustment Expense. No profit or loss will be recorded at the inception of the transaction, but underwriting losses will thereafter be incurred annually as the DCRA asset is amortized downward. The amount of the annual amortization charge will be primarily determined by how our end-of-the-year estimates as to the timing and amount of future loss payments compare to the estimates made at the beginning of the year. Eventually, when the last claim has been paid, the DCRA account will be reduced to zero. That day is 50 years or more away.
那么我们来概括一下Equitas交易的会计处理。主要的借方科目将记入：现金与投资（Cash and Investments）、再保险应收（Reinsurance Recoverable）以及承接再保险递延费用（Deferred Charges for Reinsurance Assumed，“DCRA”）。主要的贷方科目将记入：损失及理赔费用准备金（Reserve for Losses and Loss Adjustment Expense）。交易发生之初不会确认利润或亏损，但此后随着DCRA资产逐年向下摊销，我们每年都会确认承保亏损（underwriting losses）。年度摊销费用的金额，主要取决于：我们年末对未来赔付的时间与金额的估计，和年初所做估计相比发生了怎样的变化。最终，当最后一笔索赔付清时，DCRA科目将降至零——但那一天至少在50年之后，甚至更远。
What’s important to remember is that retroactive insurance contracts always produce underwriting losses for us. Whether these losses are worth experiencing depends on whether the cash we have received produces investment income that exceeds the losses. Recently our DCRA charges have annually delivered $300 million or so of underwriting losses, which have been more than offset by the income we have realized through use of the cash we received as a premium. Absent new retroactive contracts, the amount of the annual charge would normally decline over time. After the Equitas transaction, however, the annual DCRA cost will initially increase to about $450 million a year. This means that our other insurance operations must generate at least that much underwriting gain for our overall float to be cost-free. That amount is quite a hurdle but one that I believe we will clear in many, if not most, years.
需要记住的是：追溯型保险合同对我们而言“必然”会产生承保亏损。是否值得承受这些亏损，取决于我们收到的现金能否带来超过亏损的投资收益。近年来，我们的DCRA摊销每年大约带来3亿美元左右的承保亏损，但这些亏损已被我们运用收到的“保费现金”所获得的投资收益所充分抵消。若没有新的追溯合同，年度摊销费用通常会随着时间推移而下降。然而在完成Equitas交易后，年度DCRA成本在初期会提高到每年约4.5亿美元。这意味着：要让我们的整体浮存金保持“零成本”，其他保险业务必须至少产生同等规模的承保盈利。这个门槛相当高，但我相信在很多年份——即使不是大多数年份——我们都能跨过去。
Aren’t you glad that I promised you there would be no quiz?
我答应你们不会有测验——现在你们是不是有点庆幸了？
Manufacturing, Service and Retailing Operations
制造、服务与零售业务
Our activities in this part of Berkshire cover the waterfront. Let’s look, though, at a summary balance sheet and earnings statement for the entire group.
伯克希尔在这一板块的业务几乎无所不包。尽管如此，我们还是先来看一张覆盖整个板块的汇总资产负债表与利润表。
This motley group, which sells products ranging from lollipops to motor homes, earned a pleasing 25% on average tangible net worth last year. It’s noteworthy also that these operations used only minor financial leverage in achieving that return. Clearly we own some terrific businesses. We purchased many of them, however, at large premiums to net worth — a point reflected in the goodwill item shown on the balance sheet — and that fact reduces the earnings on our average carrying value to 10.8%.
这个“杂牌军”卖的产品从棒棒糖到房车应有尽有，去年在平均有形净资产（tangible net worth）上赚到了令人愉快的25%回报。值得注意的是，这些业务在取得该回报时只使用了很少的财务杠杆。显然，我们确实拥有一些很棒的企业。不过，我们收购其中许多企业时支付了远高于净资产的溢价——这体现在资产负债表上的商誉（goodwill）项目中——而这一点会拉低我们按平均账面投入（average carrying value）计算的收益率，使其只有10.8%。
Here are a few newsworthy items about companies in this sector:
下面是这个板块里几家公司值得一提的消息：
Bob Shaw, a remarkable entrepreneur who from a standing start built Shaw Industries into the country’s largest carpet producer, elected last year, at age 75, to retire. To succeed him, Bob recommended Vance Bell, a 31-year veteran at Shaw, and Bob, as usual, made the right call. Weakness in housing has caused the carpet business to slow. Shaw, however, remains a powerhouse and a major contributor to Berkshire’s earnings.
MiTek, a manufacturer of connectors for roof trusses at the time we purchased it in 2001, is developing into a mini-conglomerate. At the rate it is growing, in fact, “mini” may soon be inappropriate. In purchasing MiTek for $420 million, we lent the company $200 million at 9% and bought $198 million of stock, priced at $10,000 per share. Additionally, 55 employees bought 2,200 shares for $22 million. Each employee paid exactly the same price that we did, in most cases borrowing money to do so.
Bob Shaw是一位了不起的企业家，他白手起家把Shaw Industries做成了全美最大的地毯生产商。去年，他在75岁时选择退休。接班人方面，Bob推荐了在Shaw工作了31年的老将Vance Bell，而Bob一如既往做出了正确决定。住房市场走弱导致地毯业务放缓。不过，Shaw依然是一家强悍的企业，也是伯克希尔盈利的重要贡献者。MiTek在我们2001年收购时还是一家屋顶桁架连接件制造商，如今正发展成一个“小型综合体（mini-conglomerate）”。按它目前的成长速度，“mini”这个词可能很快就不再合适。我们以4.2亿美元收购MiTek时，向公司提供了2亿美元、利率9%的贷款，并买入了1.98亿美元的股票，定价为每股10,000美元。此外，还有55名员工以2,200股、合计2,200万美元的规模参与了购股。每位员工支付的价格与我们完全相同，而且多数人是借钱买的。
And are they ever glad they did! Five years later, MiTek’s sales have tripled and the stock is valued at $71,699 per share. Despite its making 14 acquisitions, at a cost of $291 million, MiTek has paid off its debt to Berkshire and holds $35 million of cash. We celebrated the fifth anniversary of our purchase with a party in July. I told the group that it would be embarrassing if MiTek’s stock price soared beyond that of Berkshire “A” shares. Don’t be surprised, however, if that happens (though Charlie and I will try to make our shares a moving target).
而他们简直太庆幸当初这么做了！五年之后，MiTek的销售额增长了三倍，股票估值达到每股71,699美元。尽管MiTek以2.91亿美元做了14笔收购，它仍然还清了对伯克希尔的债务，并持有3,500万美元现金。我们在7月举办了一场派对，庆祝收购五周年。我对大家说：如果MiTek的股价飙升到超过伯克希尔“A”股，那就有点尴尬了。不过，真发生也别意外（当然，查理和我会努力让我们的股价成为一个“移动靶”）。
Not all of our businesses are destined to increase profits. When an industry’s underlying economics are crumbling, talented management may slow the rate of decline. Eventually, though, eroding fundamentals will overwhelm managerial brilliance. (As a wise friend told me long ago, “If you want to get a reputation as a good businessman, be sure to get into a good business.”) And fundamentals are definitely eroding in the newspaper industry, a trend that has caused the profits of our Buffalo News to decline. The skid will almost certainly continue.
并非我们所有的业务都注定能提高利润。当一个行业的底层经济性正在崩塌时，再有才的管理层也许能减缓下滑速度。但最终，基本面持续恶化会淹没管理天才。（一位睿智的朋友很久以前告诉我：“想在商界落个好名声，记得去做一门好生意。”）而报纸业的基本面确实在恶化，这一趋势已经导致我们Buffalo News的利润下滑，而且这种下滑几乎肯定会继续。
When Charlie and I were young, the newspaper business was as easy a way to make huge returns as existed in America. As one not-too-bright publisher famously said, “I owe my fortune to two great American institutions: monopoly and nepotism.” No paper in a one-paper city, however bad the product or however inept the management, could avoid gushing profits.
在查理和我年轻时，报纸业几乎是美国最容易获得巨额回报的行业之一。有位不怎么聪明的出版商曾经出名地说过：“我的财富要归功于两大美国制度：垄断和裙带关系。”在“一城一报”的城市里，无论产品多差、管理多无能，都挡不住利润滚滚而来。
The industry’s staggering returns could be simply explained. For most of the 20th Century, newspapers were the primary source of information for the American public. Whether the subject was sports, finance, or politics, newspapers reigned supreme. Just as important, their ads were the easiest way to find job opportunities or to learn the price of groceries at your town’s supermarkets.
这个行业惊人的高回报其实很好解释。20世纪的大部分时间里，报纸是美国公众获取信息的主要渠道。无论是体育、金融还是政治，报纸都居于统治地位。同样重要的是：报纸广告是找工作机会、或了解本地超市食品杂货价格的最便捷方式。
The great majority of families therefore felt the need for a paper every day, but understandably most didn’t wish to pay for two. Advertisers preferred the paper with the most circulation, and readers tended to want the paper with the most ads and news pages. This circularity led to a law of the newspaper jungle: Survival of the Fattest.
因此，绝大多数家庭都觉得每天需要一份报纸，但也很自然地不愿意为两份报纸付钱。广告主更偏爱发行量最大的报纸；读者则倾向于想看广告最多、新闻版面最多的报纸。这种“循环强化”催生了一条报纸丛林法则：肥者生存。
Thus, when two or more papers existed in a major city (which was almost universally the case a century ago), the one that pulled ahead usually emerged as the stand-alone winner. After competition disappeared, the paper’s pricing power in both advertising and circulation was unleashed. Typically, rates for both advertisers and readers would be raised annually — and the profits rolled in. For owners this was economic heaven. (Interestingly, though papers regularly — and often in a disapproving way — reported on the profitability of, say, the auto or steel industries, they never enlightened readers about their own Midas-like situation. Hmmm . . .)
因此，当一个大城市里存在两家或更多报纸时（这在一百年前几乎是普遍现象），领先的那一家通常会最终成为“独家赢家”。竞争一消失，报纸在广告和发行两端的定价权就被彻底释放。通常，给广告主和读者的收费都会年年提高——利润滚滚而来。对所有者而言，这就是经济学的天堂。（有意思的是，报纸经常——而且往往带着不赞同的口吻——报道汽车业或钢铁业的高利润，却从不向读者说明自己那种“点石成金”般的处境。嗯……）
As long ago as my 1991 letter to shareholders, I nonetheless asserted that this insulated world was changing, writing that “the media businesses . . . will prove considerably less marvelous than I, the industry, or lenders thought would be the case only a few years ago.” Some publishers took umbrage at both this remark and other warnings from me that followed. Newspaper properties, moreover, continued to sell as if they were indestructible slot machines. In fact, many intelligent newspaper executives who regularly chronicled and analyzed important worldwide events were either blind or indifferent to what was going on under their noses.
早在1991年致股东信中，我就断言这个“被隔离的世界”正在发生变化，并写道：“媒体业务……最终会被证明远没有我、行业本身或放贷者在仅仅几年前所认为的那么美妙。”一些出版商对这句话以及我后来发出的其他警告都很不满。与此同时，报纸资产仍像“打不坏的老虎机”一样在市场上被买卖。事实上，许多聪明的报业高管，平时能持续记录并分析世界大事，却对眼皮底下正在发生的变化要么视而不见，要么漠不关心。
Now, however, almost all newspaper owners realize that they are constantly losing ground in the battle for eyeballs. Simply put, if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed.
但现在，几乎所有报纸所有者都意识到：在争夺“眼球”的战斗中，他们正在持续失地。简单说，如果有线与卫星广播，以及互联网，是先出现的，那么我们今天所熟悉的报纸很可能根本不会诞生。
In Berkshire’s world, Stan Lipsey does a terrific job running the Buffalo News, and I am enormously proud of its editor, Margaret Sullivan. The News’ penetration of its market is the highest among that of this country’s large newspapers. We also do better financially than most metropolitan newspapers, even though Buffalo’s population and business trends are not good. Nevertheless, this operation faces unrelenting pressures that will cause profit margins to slide.
在伯克希尔的体系里，Stan Lipsey把Buffalo News经营得非常出色；我也为其主编Margaret Sullivan感到无比自豪。News在本地市场的渗透率，是美国大型报纸中最高的。即使Buffalo的人口与商业趋势并不理想，我们在财务表现上也优于多数大都市报纸。尽管如此，这项业务仍将面临持续不断的压力，利润率会随之下滑。
True, we have the leading online news operation in Buffalo, and it will continue to attract more viewers and ads. However, the economic potential of a newspaper internet site — given the many alternative sources of information and entertainment that are free and only a click away — is at best a small fraction of that existing in the past for a print newspaper facing no competition.
确实，我们在Buffalo拥有当地领先的线上新闻业务，它还会继续吸引更多读者与广告。但考虑到信息与娱乐的替代来源太多——而且免费、点一下就能得到——一家报纸网站的经济潜力，充其量只是过去那种“几乎没有竞争的纸媒报纸”潜力的一小部分。
For a local resident, ownership of a city’s paper, like ownership of a sports team, still produces instant prominence. With it typically comes power and influence. These are ruboffs that appeal to many people with money. Beyond that, civic-minded, wealthy individuals may feel that local ownership will serve their community well. That’s why Peter Kiewit bought the Omaha paper more than 40 years ago.
对当地居民来说，拥有一座城市的报纸，就像拥有一支体育队一样，仍然能立刻带来显赫地位；通常还会随之带来权力与影响力。这些“附带收益”对很多有钱人颇具吸引力。除此之外，一些富有且有公民意识的人可能认为：由本地人拥有报纸会更好地服务社区。这就是为什么Peter Kiewit在40多年前买下奥马哈报纸。
We are likely therefore to see non-economic individual buyers of newspapers emerge, just as we have seen such buyers acquire major sports franchises. Aspiring press lords should be careful, however: There’s no rule that says a newspaper’s revenues can’t fall below its expenses and that losses can’t mushroom. Fixed costs are high in the newspaper business, and that’s bad news when unit volume heads south. As the importance of newspapers diminishes, moreover, the “psychic” value of possessing one will wane, whereas owning a sports franchise will likely retain its cachet.
因此，我们很可能会看到一些“非经济动机”的个人买家进入报纸行业，就像我们已经看到他们收购大型体育俱乐部一样。不过，想当“报业领主”的人要小心：没有任何规则规定报纸收入就不能低于成本、亏损就不能迅速扩大。报纸行业固定成本很高，当单位销量走下坡路时，这就是坏消息。而且，随着报纸的重要性下降，拥有一份报纸所带来的“心理价值”也会减弱；相比之下，拥有体育俱乐部的光环很可能还能保留。
贝佐斯因“非经济动机”买下《华盛顿邮报》而不是体育球队。
Unless we face an irreversible cash drain, we will stick with the News, just as we’ve said that we would. (Read economic principle 11, on page 76.) Charlie and I love newspapers — we each read five a day — and believe that a free and energetic press is a key ingredient for maintaining a great democracy. We hope that some combination of print and online will ward off economic doomsday for newspapers, and we will work hard in Buffalo to develop a sustainable business model. I think we will be successful. But the days of lush profits from our newspaper are over.
只要不会出现不可逆的现金流失血，我们就会像我们承诺的那样继续持有News。（请参见第76页的经济原则11。）查理和我都热爱报纸——我们每人每天读五份——并且相信：自由而充满活力的新闻媒体，是维系伟大民主制度的关键要素之一。我们希望纸媒与线上某种组合能够让报纸躲过经济上的末日，我们也会在Buffalo努力探索一个可持续的商业模式。我认为我们会成功。但来自我们报纸的“丰厚利润时代”已经结束了。
A much improved situation is emerging at NetJets, which sells and manages fractionally-owned aircraft. This company has never had a problem growing: Revenues from flight operations have increased 596% since our purchase in 1998. But profits had been erratic.
与之相反，NetJets正在出现一个大幅改善的局面。这家公司从事分时（fractional）飞机的销售与管理。它在增长方面从来不成问题：自我们1998年收购以来，飞行业务收入增长了596%。但利润一直起伏不定。
Our move to Europe, which began in 1996, was particularly expensive. After five years of operation there, we had acquired only 80 customers. And by mid-year 2006 our cumulative pretax loss had risen to $212 million. But European demand has now exploded, with a net of 589 customers having been added in 2005-2006. Under Mark Booth’s brilliant leadership, NetJets is now operating profitably in Europe, and we expect the positive trend to continue.
我们向欧洲扩张的行动始于1996年，代价尤其高昂。我们在那里运营了五年，却只获得了80位客户。到2006年年中，我们累计的税前亏损已升至2.12亿美元。但现在欧洲需求已经爆发：仅在2005-2006两年间，净新增客户就达到589位。在Mark Booth卓越的领导下，NetJets如今已在欧洲实现盈利，我们预计这一积极趋势会持续。
Our U.S. operation also had a good year in 2006, which led to worldwide pre-tax earnings of $143 million at NetJets last year. We made this profit even though we suffered a loss of $19 million in the first quarter.
我们在美国的业务在2006年也交出了一份不错的答卷，使NetJets去年全球税前利润达到1.43亿美元。要知道，第一季度我们还亏损了1,900万美元，但全年仍然实现了盈利。
Credit Rich Santulli, along with Mark, for this turnaround. Rich, like many of our managers, has no financial need to work. But you’d never know it. He’s absolutely tireless — monitoring operations, making sales, and traveling the globe to constantly widen the already-enormous lead that NetJets enjoys over its competitors. Today, the value of the fleet we manage is far greater than that managed by our three largest competitors combined.
这次扭转局面，要归功于Rich Santulli——以及Mark。Rich和我们许多经理人一样，经济上完全不需要工作。但你绝对看不出来。他精力惊人——盯运营、做销售、满世界飞行，不断把NetJets相对于竞争对手本已巨大的领先优势继续拉大。如今，我们管理的机队价值远远超过我们最大的三家竞争对手合计管理的机队价值。
There’s a reason NetJets is the runaway leader: It offers the ultimate in safety and service. At Berkshire, and at a number of our subsidiaries, NetJets aircraft are an indispensable business tool. I also have a contract for personal use with NetJets and so do members of my family and most Berkshire directors. (None of us, I should add, gets a discount.) Once you’ve flown NetJets, returning to commercial flights is like going back to holding hands.
NetJets之所以能一骑绝尘，是有原因的：它提供了顶级的安全与服务。在伯克希尔以及我们多家子公司里，NetJets的飞机是不可或缺的商业工具。我自己也与NetJets签有个人使用合同，我的家人以及伯克希尔的大多数董事也是如此。（我补充一句：我们没有任何人享受折扣。）一旦你坐过NetJets，再回到普通商业航班，就像从“成人”退回到“牵手走路”一样。
Regulated Utility Business
受监管的公用事业业务
Berkshire has an 86.6% (fully diluted) interest in MidAmerican Energy Holdings, which owns a wide variety of utility operations. The largest of these are (1) Yorkshire Electricity and Northern Electric, whose 3.7 million electric customers make it the third largest distributor of electricity in the U.K.; (2) MidAmerican Energy, which serves 706,000 electric customers, primarily in Iowa; (3) Pacific Power and Rocky Mountain Power, serving about 1.7 million electric customers in six western states; and (4) Kern River and Northern Natural pipelines, which carry about 8% of the natural gas consumed in the U.S.
伯克希尔持有MidAmerican Energy Holdings 86.6%的权益（按完全稀释口径）。MidAmerican拥有多种公用事业资产，其中规模最大的包括：(1) Yorkshire Electricity和Northern Electric，它们拥有370万电力客户，是英国第三大电力分销商；(2) MidAmerican Energy，主要在Iowa为706,000名电力客户提供服务；(3) Pacific Power和Rocky Mountain Power，在美国西部六个州为约170万电力客户提供服务；以及(4) Kern River与Northern Natural两条管道，它们输送的天然气约占美国消费量的8%。
Our partners in ownership of MidAmerican are Walter Scott, and its two terrific managers, Dave Sokol and Greg Abel. It’s unimportant how many votes each party has; we will make major moves only when we are unanimous in thinking them wise. Six years of working with Dave, Greg and Walter have underscored my original belief: Berkshire couldn’t have better partners.
与我们共同持有MidAmerican的合伙人包括Walter Scott，以及两位杰出的经理人Dave Sokol和Greg Abel。各方各有多少投票权并不重要；只有当我们一致认为某项重大行动明智时，我们才会推进。与Dave、Greg和Walter共事六年的经历，进一步印证了我最初的判断：伯克希尔不可能找到更好的合伙人。
Somewhat incongruously, MidAmerican owns the second largest real estate brokerage firm in the U.S., HomeServices of America. This company operates through 20 locally-branded firms with 20,300 agents. Despite HomeServices’ purchase of two operations last year, the company’s overall volume fell 9% to $58 billion, and profits fell 50%.
有点“画风不搭”的是，MidAmerican还拥有美国第二大房地产经纪公司HomeServices of America。该公司通过20家本地品牌公司运营，拥有20,300名经纪人。尽管HomeServices去年收购了两项业务，公司整体成交额仍下降9%至580亿美元，利润下降50%。
The slowdown in residential real estate activity stems in part from the weakened lending practices of recent years. The “optional” contracts and “teaser” rates that have been popular have allowed borrowers to make payments in the early years of their mortgages that fall far short of covering normal interest costs. Naturally, there are few defaults when virtually nothing is required of a borrower. As a cynic has said, “A rolling loan gathers no loss.” But payments not made add to principal, and borrowers who can’t afford normal monthly payments early on are hit later with above-normal monthly obligations. This is the Scarlett O’Hara scenario: “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” For many home owners, “tomorrow” has now arrived. Consequently there is a huge overhang of offerings in several of HomeServices’ markets.
住宅房地产活动放缓，部分原因在于近些年的放贷做法变得薄弱。流行的“可选择（optional）”合同与“诱导（teaser）”利率，让借款人在按揭最初几年里支付的月供远不足以覆盖正常利息成本。自然地，在几乎不要求借款人付出什么的情况下，违约很少。正如一个愤世嫉俗者所说：“滚动的贷款不会结出损失。”但未支付的款项会累积到本金里，而那些一开始就负担不起正常月供的人，后来会被迫承担高于正常水平的月度义务。这就像Scarlett O’Hara式的心态：“明天再想。”对许多房主而言，“明天”如今已经到来。因此，在HomeServices若干市场里，待售房源出现了巨大的供给“悬顶”（overhang）。
Nevertheless, we will be seeking to purchase additional brokerage operations. A decade from now, HomeServices will almost certainly be much larger.
尽管如此，我们仍会寻求收购更多经纪业务。十年之后，HomeServices几乎肯定会大得多。
Here are some key figures on MidAmerican’s operations:
以下是MidAmerican业务的一些关键数据：
Finance and Financial Products
金融与金融产品
You will be happy to hear — and I’m even happier — that this will be my last discussion of the losses at Gen Re’s derivative operation. When we started to wind this business down early in 2002, we had 23,218 contracts outstanding. Now we have 197. Our cumulative pre-tax loss from this operation totals $409 million, but only $5 million occurred in 2006. Charlie says that if we had properly classified the $409 million on our 2001 balance sheet, it would have been labeled “Good Until Reached For.” In any event, a Shakespearean thought — slightly modified — seems appropriate for the tombstone of this derivative business: “All’s well that ends.”
你们会高兴听到——而我更高兴——这将是我最后一次谈Gen Re衍生品业务的亏损。我们在2002年初开始缩减这项业务时，未到期合约还有23,218份；现在只剩197份。这项业务累计税前亏损为4.09亿美元，但2006年只亏了500万美元。查理说，如果我们在2001年的资产负债表上把这4.09亿美元恰当地分类，它应该被标注为“够不着就没事（Good Until Reached For）”。无论如何，用一句稍作改动的莎士比亚式感叹，或许很适合作为这项衍生品业务的墓志铭：“善终便好（All’s well that ends）。”
We’ve also wound up our investment in Value Capital. So earnings or losses from these two lines of business are making their final appearance in the table that annually appears in this section.
我们也已经结束了对Value Capital的投资。因此，这两条业务线所产生的盈亏，将在每年出现在本节的表格中作最后一次亮相。
Clayton Homes remains an anomaly in the manufactured-housing industry, which last year recorded its lowest unit sales since 1962. Indeed, the industry’s volume last year was only about one-third that of 1999. Outside of Clayton, I doubt if the industry, overall, made any money in 2006.
在成品房（manufactured-housing）行业里，Clayton Homes依然是个“异类”。这个行业去年录得自1962年以来最低的单位销量。事实上，去年全行业的销量只有1999年的大约三分之一。除了Clayton之外，我怀疑整个行业在2006年总体上几乎没人赚钱。
Yet Clayton earned $513 million pre-tax and paid Berkshire an additional $86 million as a fee for our obtaining the funds to finance Clayton’s $10 billion portfolio of installment receivables. Berkshire’s financial strength has clearly been of huge help to Clayton. But the driving force behind the company’s success is Kevin Clayton. Kevin knows the business forward and backward, is a rational decision-maker and a joy to work with. Because of acquisitions, Clayton now employs 14,787 people, compared to 6,661 at the time of our purchase.
但Clayton实现了5.13亿美元税前利润，并额外向伯克希尔支付了8,600万美元费用，用以补偿我们为其100亿美元分期应收款（installment receivables）融资组合筹措资金。伯克希尔强大的财务实力显然给Clayton提供了巨大帮助。但推动公司成功的核心力量，是Kevin Clayton。Kevin对业务了如指掌，决策理性，合作起来也让人愉快。由于收购带来的扩张，Clayton目前雇员达到14,787人，而我们收购它时只有6,661人。
We have two leasing operations: CORT (furniture), run by Paul Arnold, and XTRA (truck trailers), run by Bill Franz. CORT’s earnings improved significantly last year, and XTRA’s remained at the high level attained in 2005. We continue to look for tuck-in acquisitions to be run by Paul or Bill, and also are open to ideas for new leasing opportunities.
我们有两项租赁业务：由Paul Arnold负责的CORT（家具租赁），以及由Bill Franz负责的XTRA（卡车挂车租赁）。CORT去年的盈利显著改善，XTRA则保持在2005年达到的高水平。我们仍在寻找可由Paul或Bill来经营的“补强型”收购，也对新的租赁机会持开放态度。
Here’s a breakdown of earnings in this sector:
以下是该板块盈利的拆分：
Investments
投资
We show below our common stock investments. With two exceptions, those that had a market value of more than $700 million at the end of 2006 are itemized. We don’t itemize the two securities referred to, which have a market value of $1.9 billion, because we continue to buy them. I could, of course, tell you their names. But then I would have to kill you.
下面列示的是我们的普通股投资。除两项例外，凡在2006年底市值超过7亿美元的持仓都逐项列出。那两项未被列示的证券市值合计19亿美元之所以不展开，是因为我们仍在持续买入。当然，我也可以告诉你它们的名字——但那样我就得把你杀了。
We are delighted by the 2006 business performance of virtually all of our investees. Last year, we told you that our expectation was that these companies, in aggregate, would increase their earnings by 6% to 8% annually, a rate that would double their earnings every ten years or so. In 2006 American Express, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Wells Fargo, our largest holdings, increased per-share earnings by 18%, 9%, 8% and 11%. These are stellar results, and we thank their CEOs.
我们对几乎所有被投企业在2006年的经营表现都非常满意。去年我们告诉你，我们预计这些公司整体将以每年6%到8%的速度增长盈利——也就是大约每十年盈利翻一倍。2006年，American Express、Coca-Cola、Procter & Gamble和Wells Fargo（我们最大的几项持仓）每股盈利分别增长了18%、9%、8%和11%。这些结果堪称耀眼，我们要感谢它们的CEO。
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We’ve come close to eliminating our direct foreign-exchange position, from which we realized about $186 million in pre-tax profits in 2006 (earnings that were included in the Finance and Financial Products table shown earlier). That brought our total gain since inception of this position in 2002 to $2.2 billion. Here’s a breakdown by currency:
我们几乎已经消除了直接的外汇头寸。2006年我们从中实现了约1.86亿美元的税前利润（这部分收益已计入前文“金融与金融产品”板块的表格）。这使得我们自2002年建立该头寸以来的累计收益达到22亿美元。下面是按币种划分的明细：
对贸易逆差的判断，不做空想，很多人的想法只是在自己的脑子里不断的转。
We’ve made large indirect currency profits as well, though I’ve never tallied the precise amount. For example, in 2002-2003 we spent about $82 million buying — of all things — Enron bonds, some of which were denominated in Euros. Already we’ve received distributions of $179 million from these bonds, and our remaining stake is worth $173 million. That means our overall gain is $270 million, part of which came from the appreciation of the Euro that took place after our bond purchase.
我们也赚到了不少“间接”的汇率收益，尽管我从未精确统计过金额。比如，在2002-2003年，我们花了约8,200万美元买入——说出来你可能不信——Enron债券，其中一些以欧元计价。到目前为止，我们已从这些债券中收回了1.79亿美元的分配款，而剩余持仓价值还有1.73亿美元。这意味着我们的总收益达到2.70亿美元，其中一部分来自我们买入债券后欧元升值带来的贡献。
When we first began making foreign exchange purchases, interest-rate differentials between the U.S. and most foreign countries favored a direct currency position. But that spread turned negative in 2005. We therefore looked for other ways to gain foreign-currency exposure, such as the ownership of foreign equities or of U.S. stocks with major earnings abroad. The currency factor, we should emphasize, is not dominant in our selection of equities, but is merely one of many considerations.
当我们最初开始做外汇购买时，美国与多数外国之间的利差对“直接持有外汇头寸”是有利的。但这种利差在2005年转为不利。于是我们转而寻找其他方式来获得外币敞口，比如持有外国股票，或持有那些海外盈利占比很大的美国公司股票。需要强调的是：汇率因素并不是我们选股时的主导因素，只是众多考虑之一。
As our U.S. trade problems worsen, the probability that the dollar will weaken over time continues to be high. I fervently believe in real trade — the more the better for both us and the world. We had about $1.44 trillion of this honest-to-God trade in 2006. But the U.S. also had $.76 trillion of pseudo-trade last year — imports for which we exchanged no goods or services. (Ponder, for a moment, how commentators would describe the situation if our imports were $.76 trillion — a full 6% of GDP — and we had no exports.) Making these purchases that weren’t reciprocated by sales, the U.S. necessarily transferred ownership of its assets or IOUs to the rest of the world. Like a very wealthy but self-indulgent family, we peeled off a bit of what we owned in order to consume more than we produced.
随着美国贸易问题加剧，美元随时间走弱的概率仍然很高。我由衷相信真实贸易（real trade）——越多越好，对我们和世界都是好事。2006年，我们这种“货真价实”的贸易规模约为1.44万亿美元。但去年美国还有0.76万亿美元的“伪贸易”（pseudo-trade）——也就是我们进口了商品，却没有用任何商品或服务作为交换。（想一想：如果我们的进口是0.76万亿美元——相当于GDP的6%——而我们完全没有出口，评论员会如何描述这种局面？）由于这些购买没有对应的销售回流，美国必然把自己的资产所有权或欠条（IOUs）转移给世界其他国家。就像一个非常富有但放纵的家庭，我们从自己拥有的东西里剥下一小块，以便消费超过生产。
The U.S. can do a lot of this because we are an extraordinarily rich country that has behaved responsibly in the past. The world is therefore willing to accept our bonds, real estate, stocks and businesses. And we have a vast store of these to hand over.
美国之所以能这么做，是因为我们是一个异常富裕的国家，而且过去一直表现得相当负责任。因此，世界愿意接受我们的债券、房地产、股票以及企业；而我们手里也确实有大量这类资产可以交出去。
These transfers will have consequences, however. Already the prediction I made last year about one fall-out from our spending binge has come true: The “investment income” account of our country — positive in every previous year since 1915 — turned negative in 2006. Foreigners now earn more on their U.S. investments than we do on our investments abroad. In effect, we’ve used up our bank account and turned to our credit card. And, like everyone who gets in hock, the U.S. will now experience “reverse compounding” as we pay ever-increasing amounts of interest on interest.
但这种转移会带来后果。去年我做过一个预测：我们“挥霍式消费”会带来一个副作用——这一点已经在2006年成为现实：美国的“投资收益”科目自1915年以来每一年都为正，但在2006年转为负值。现在，外国人在美国投资上赚到的收益，已经超过我们在海外投资上赚到的收益。实际上，我们把“存款账户”花光了，开始刷“信用卡”。而且像所有负债的人一样，美国将经历“反向复利（reverse compounding）”：我们会支付越来越多的“利滚利”的利息。
I want to emphasize that even though our course is unwise, Americans will live better ten or twenty years from now than they do today. Per-capita wealth will increase. But our citizens will also be forced every year to ship a significant portion of their current production abroad merely to service the cost of our huge debtor position. It won’t be pleasant to work part of each day to pay for the over-consumption of your ancestors. I believe that at some point in the future U.S. workers and voters will find this annual “tribute” so onerous that there will be a severe political backlash. How that will play out in markets is impossible to predict — but to expect a “soft landing” seems like wishful thinking.
我想强调：尽管我们现在的路径并不明智，但十年或二十年后，美国人仍会比今天过得更好。人均财富会继续增加。但与此同时，我们的公民每年也会被迫把当期生产中的一大部分送往海外，仅仅为了偿付我们巨额债务头寸的成本。为了给祖先的过度消费买单，而被迫每天拿出一部分时间去工作，这不会令人愉快。我相信在未来某个时点，美国工人和选民会觉得这种年度“贡赋”沉重到难以忍受，从而引发强烈的政治反弹。它会在市场中以何种方式体现，无法预测——但如果指望出现“软着陆”，恐怕只是自我安慰。
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I should mention that all of the direct currency profits we have realized have come from forward contracts, which are derivatives, and that we have entered into other types of derivatives contracts as well. That may seem odd, since you know of our expensive experience in unwinding the derivatives book at Gen Re and also have heard me talk of the systemic problems that could result from the enormous growth in the use of derivatives. Why, you may wonder, are we fooling around with such potentially toxic material?
我得提一句：我们实现的所有“直接”外汇利润都来自远期合约（forward contracts），而远期合约本质上属于衍生品；此外，我们也签过其他类型的衍生品合约。这听起来可能有些奇怪，因为你们知道我们在Gen Re清理衍生品账簿时付出了昂贵代价，也听我谈过：衍生品使用规模的巨大增长可能引发系统性问题。那么你可能会问：既然如此，我们为什么还要去碰这种潜在有毒的东西？
The answer is that derivatives, just like stocks and bonds, are sometimes wildly mispriced. For many years, accordingly, we have selectively written derivative contracts — few in number but sometimes for large dollar amounts. We currently have 62 contracts outstanding. I manage them personally, and they are free of counterparty credit risk. So far, these derivative contracts have worked out well for us, producing pre-tax profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars (above and beyond the gains I’ve itemized from forward foreign-exchange contracts). Though we will experience losses from time to time, we are likely to continue to earn — overall — significant profits from mispriced derivatives.
答案是：衍生品就像股票和债券一样，有时会被严重错价。因此，多年来我们一直有选择地卖出（written）一些衍生品合约——数量很少，但名义金额有时很大。目前我们有62份未到期合约。我亲自管理它们，而且这些合约不存在对手方信用风险。迄今为止，这些衍生品交易对我们效果很好，带来了数亿美元的税前利润（这还不包括我之前列示的外汇远期合约收益）。虽然我们不时会出现亏损，但总体而言，我们很可能会继续从“错价衍生品”中赚到可观利润。
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I have told you that Berkshire has three outstanding candidates to replace me as CEO and that the Board knows exactly who should take over if I should die tonight. Each of the three is much younger than I. The directors believe it’s important that my successor have the prospect of a long tenure.
我曾告诉你们，伯克希尔有三位杰出的候选人可以接替我担任CEO，董事会也非常清楚：如果我今晚就去世，应由谁接任。这三个人都比我年轻得多。董事们认为，接班人要有长期任期的可能性，这是很重要的。
Frankly, we are not as well-prepared on the investment side of our business. There’s a history here: At one time, Charlie was my potential replacement for investing, and more recently Lou Simpson has filled that slot. Lou is a top-notch investor with an outstanding long-term record of managing GEICO’s equity portfolio. But he is only six years younger than I. If I were to die soon, he would fill in magnificently for a short period. For the long-term, though, we need a different answer.
坦率地说，在我们业务的“投资”这一侧，我们准备得没那么充分。这里有一段历史：曾经，查理是我在投资方面的潜在接班人；而近些年，这个位置由Lou Simpson承担。Lou是一流投资人，长期管理GEICO股票组合的记录卓越。但他只比我年轻六岁。如果我很快去世，他可以在短期内出色地顶上。但从长期看，我们需要另一个答案。
At our October board meeting, we discussed that subject fully. And we emerged with a plan, which I will carry out with the help of Charlie and Lou.
在10月的董事会会议上，我们把这个问题彻底讨论了一遍。最终我们制定了一套计划，而我将在查理和Lou的帮助下把它落实。
Under this plan, I intend to hire a younger man or woman with the potential to manage a very large portfolio, who we hope will succeed me as Berkshire’s chief investment officer when the need for someone to do that arises. As part of the selection process, we may in fact take on several candidates.
按照这套计划，我打算聘请一位更年轻的男士或女士，他/她要具备管理超大规模投资组合的潜力；当未来需要有人来接任伯克希尔首席投资官时，我们希望这位新人能成为我的继任者。作为遴选过程的一部分，我们甚至可能会同时招入几位候选人。
Picking the right person(s) will not be an easy task. It’s not hard, of course, to find smart people, among them individuals who have impressive investment records. But there is far more to successful long-term investing than brains and performance that has recently been good.
挑对人并不容易。当然，找聪明人不难，其中也不乏近期业绩亮眼、投资记录出色的人。但长期投资的成功，远不止智力与短期漂亮的成绩单。
Over time, markets will do extraordinary, even bizarre, things. A single, big mistake could wipe out a long string of successes. We therefore need someone genetically programmed to recognize and avoid serious risks, including those never before encountered. Certain perils that lurk in investment strategies cannot be spotted by use of the models commonly employed today by financial institutions.
随着时间推移，市场会做出非同寻常、甚至怪诞的事情。一次重大的错误，就可能抹掉一长串成功。我们因此需要一种“基因层面就被编程为能识别并躲开严重风险”的人——包括那些以前从未遇到过的风险。投资策略里潜伏的一些危险，用今天金融机构常用的模型是看不出来的。
Temperament is also important. Independent thinking, emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior is vital to long-term investment success. I’ve seen a lot of very smart people who have lacked these virtues.
性格气质也同样重要。独立思考、情绪稳定，以及对人性与制度行为的敏锐理解，对长期投资成功至关重要。我见过不少非常聪明的人，却缺少这些品质。
制度性的愚蠢。
Finally, we have a special problem to consider: our ability to keep the person we hire. Being able to list Berkshire on a resume would materially enhance the marketability of an investment manager. We will need, therefore, to be sure we can retain our choice, even though he or she could leave and make much more money elsewhere.
最后，我们还有一个特殊难题：如何留住我们招来的那个人。简历上写上“Berkshire”，会显著提升一个投资经理的市场身价。因此，我们必须确保能留住我们的选择——即使他/她到别处能赚到更多钱，也不走。
There are surely people who fit what we need, but they may be hard to identify. In 1979, Jack Byrne and I felt we had found such a person in Lou Simpson. We then made an arrangement with him whereby he would be paid well for sustained overperformance. Under this deal, he has earned large amounts. Lou, however, could have left us long ago to manage far greater sums on more advantageous terms. If money alone had been the object, that’s exactly what he would have done. But Lou never considered such a move. We need to find a younger person or two made of the same stuff.
肯定有人符合我们的需求，但他们可能很难被识别出来。1979年，Jack Byrne和我认为我们在Lou Simpson身上找到了这样的人。后来我们与他达成了一项安排：只要他能持续超额表现，就会获得优厚报酬。在这份协议下，他赚到了大笔收入。不过，Lou早在很多年前就完全可以离开我们，用更有利的条款去管理更大规模的资金。如果他的目标仅仅是钱，他早就会那么做了。但Lou从未考虑过那样的选择。我们需要找到一两位更年轻、同样“材料”的人。
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The good news: At 76, I feel terrific and, according to all measurable indicators, am in excellent health. It’s amazing what Cherry Coke and hamburgers will do for a fellow.
好消息是：我已经76岁了，但感觉棒极了；而且从所有可衡量的指标看，我的健康状况都非常优秀。Cherry Coke和汉堡对一个人能起到的作用，真是令人惊讶。
Some Changes on Berkshire’s Board
伯克希尔董事会的一些变化
The composition of our board will change in two ways this spring. One change will involve the Chace family, which has been connected to Berkshire and its predecessor companies for more than a century. In 1929, the first Malcolm G. Chace played an important role in merging four New England textile operations into Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates. That company merged with Hathaway Manufacturing in 1955 to form Berkshire Hathaway, and Malcolm G. Chace, Jr. became its chairman.
今年春天，我们董事会的构成会发生两处变化。其中一处与Chace家族有关——这个家族与伯克希尔及其前身公司渊源超过一个世纪。1929年，第一代Malcolm G. Chace在促成四家新英格兰纺织企业合并为Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates的过程中发挥了重要作用。该公司在1955年与Hathaway Manufacturing合并，形成了Berkshire Hathaway，而Malcolm G. Chace, Jr.随后出任董事长。
Early in 1965, Malcolm arranged for Buffett Partnership Ltd. to buy a key block of Berkshire shares and welcomed us as the new controlling shareholder of the company. Malcolm continued as non-executive chairman until 1969. He was both a wonderful gentleman and helpful partner.
1965年初，Malcolm安排Buffett Partnership Ltd.买入了伯克希尔的一大关键股份，并欢迎我们成为公司的新控股股东。Malcolm一直担任非执行董事长直到1969年。他既是一位风度翩翩的绅士，也是非常有帮助的合作伙伴。
That description also fits his son, Malcolm “Kim” Chace, who succeeded his father on Berkshire’s board in 1992. But last year Kim, now actively and successfully running a community bank that he founded in 1996, suggested that we find a younger person to replace him on our board. We have done so, and Kim will step down as a director at the annual meeting. I owe much to the Chaces and wish to thank Kim for his many years of service to Berkshire.
这段评价同样适用于他的儿子——Malcolm “Kim” Chace。Kim在1992年接替父亲进入伯克希尔董事会。但去年，Kim（现正积极且成功地经营一家他在1996年创立的社区银行）建议我们为董事会找一位更年轻的人来接替他。我们已经这么做了，Kim将在股东大会上卸任董事。我受益于Chace家族良多，也要感谢Kim多年来对伯克希尔的服务。
In selecting a new director, we were guided by our long-standing criteria, which are that board members be owner-oriented, business-savvy, interested and truly independent. I say “truly” because many directors who are now deemed independent by various authorities and observers are far from that, relying heavily as they do on directors’ fees to maintain their standard of living. These payments, which come in many forms, often range between $150,000 and $250,000 annually, compensation that may approach or even exceed all other income of the “independent” director. And — surprise, surprise — director compensation has soared in recent years, pushed up by recommendations from corporate America’s favorite consultant, Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo. (The name may be phony, but the action it conveys is not.)
在选择新董事时，我们遵循一贯标准：董事必须以所有者视角行事、懂商业、有兴趣、并且真正独立。我强调“真正”，是因为许多如今被各类权威和观察者视为“独立”的董事，其实离独立差得很远——他们高度依赖董事费来维持自己的生活水平。这些报酬形式多样，往往每年在15万到25万美元之间，可能接近甚至超过这位“独立”董事的其他全部收入。而且——毫不意外——近年来董事报酬飙升，背后推手是企业美国最喜爱的顾问公司：Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo（名字也许是虚构的，但它所表达的动作绝非虚构）。
Charlie and I believe our four criteria are essential if directors are to do their job — which, by law, is to faithfully represent owners. Yet these criteria are usually ignored. Instead, consultants and CEOs seeking board candidates will often say, “We’re looking for a woman,” or “a Hispanic,” or “someone from abroad,” or what have you. It sometimes sounds as if the mission is to stock Noah’s ark. Over the years I’ve been queried many times about potential directors and have yet to hear anyone ask, “Does he think like an intelligent owner?”
查理和我认为，这四条标准如果董事要把工作做好——而他们依法的职责就是忠实代表所有者——就必不可少。但这些标准通常被忽视。相反，顾问和寻找董事候选人的CEO往往会说：“我们想找一位女性”，或“找一位西语裔”，或“找一位海外人士”，诸如此类。有时候听起来，任务像是在给诺亚方舟凑物种。多年来，别人无数次问我有没有合适的董事人选，但我至今从没听到谁问过一句：“他是否像一个聪明的所有者那样思考？”
大部分人离了标签是没有办法思考的。
The questions I instead get would sound ridiculous to someone seeking candidates for, say, a football team, or an arbitration panel or a military command. In those cases, the selectors would look for people who had the specific talents and attitudes that were required for a specialized job. At Berkshire, we are in the specialized activity of running a business well, and therefore we seek business judgment.
而我收到的那些问题，如果放到比如挑选一支橄榄球队、一个仲裁小组或一支军队指挥团队的场景里，听起来都会荒唐可笑。在那些场合，遴选者会寻找具备特定才能与态度的人，因为那是一项高度专业化的工作。在伯克希尔，我们从事的同样是一项高度专业的活动：把企业经营好。因此，我们寻找的是商业判断力。
That’s exactly what we’ve found in Susan Decker, CFO of Yahoo!, who will join our board at the annual meeting. We are lucky to have her: She scores very high on our four criteria and additionally, at 44, is young — an attribute, as you may have noticed, that your Chairman has long lacked. We will seek more young directors in the future, but never by slighting the four qualities that we insist upon.
而我们在Susan Decker——Yahoo!的CFO——身上恰恰找到了这一点。她将在股东大会上加入我们的董事会。能拥有她，我们很幸运：她在我们的四条标准上得分很高；此外，她44岁，年轻——正如你可能注意到的，你们的董事长长期以来一直缺少这个属性。未来我们会继续寻找更多年轻董事，但绝不会以牺牲我们坚持的四项品质为代价。
This and That
杂项
Berkshire will pay about $4.4 billion in federal income tax on its 2006 earnings. In its last fiscal year the U.S. Government spent $2.6 trillion, or about $7 billion per day. Thus, for more than half of one day, Berkshire picked up the tab for all federal expenditures, ranging from Social Security and Medicare payments to the cost of our armed services. Had there been only 600 taxpayers like Berkshire, no one else in America would have needed to pay any federal income or payroll taxes.
伯克希尔将为2006年的盈利缴纳约44亿美元的联邦所得税。在上一财年，美国联邦政府支出2.6万亿美元，约合每天70亿美元。因此，在超过半天的时间里，伯克希尔等于为联邦政府所有开支“买了单”——从Social Security和Medicare到武装部队的费用都包括在内。假如全美国只有600个像伯克希尔这样的纳税人，那么美国其他人将不需要缴纳任何联邦所得税或工资税。
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Our federal return last year, we should add, ran to 9,386 pages. To handle this filing, state and foreign tax returns, a myriad of SEC requirements, and all of the other matters involved in running Berkshire, we have gone all the way up to 19 employees at World Headquarters.
另外补充一句：我们去年提交的联邦报税文件多达9,386页。为了处理这份申报，以及各州与海外税务申报、SEC的无数要求，以及经营伯克希尔涉及的其他所有事项，我们在“世界总部”把员工人数一路扩编到了19人。
This crew occupies 9,708 square feet of space, and Charlie — at World Headquarters West in Los Angeles — uses another 655 square feet. Our home-office payroll, including benefits and counting both locations, totaled $3,531,978 last year. We’re careful when spending your money.
这支团队占用的办公面积为9,708平方英尺；而查理——在洛杉矶的“世界总部西部”——另用655平方英尺。去年我们的总部薪酬总额（含福利，两个地点合计）为3,531,978美元。我们花你们的钱时很谨慎。
Corporate bigwigs often complain about government spending, criticizing bureaucrats who they say spend taxpayers’ money differently from how they would if it were their own. But sometimes the financial behavior of executives will also vary based on whose wallet is getting depleted. Here’s an illustrative tale from my days at Salomon. In the 1980s the company had a barber, Jimmy by name, who came in weekly to give free haircuts to the top brass. A manicurist was also on tap. Then, because of a cost-cutting drive, patrons were told to pay their own way. One top executive (not the CEO) who had previously visited Jimmy weekly went immediately to a once-every-three-weeks schedule.
企业高管们常常抱怨政府开支，批评官僚们花纳税人的钱不像花自己的钱。但有时候，高管的花钱方式也会因为“被掏空的是谁的钱包”而不同。这里有个能说明问题的故事，来自我在Salomon的日子。上世纪80年代，公司有位理发师叫Jimmy，每周来一次，给高层免费理发。还有美甲师随叫随到。后来因为削减成本，大家被要求自掏腰包。有一位顶级高管（不是CEO）原本每周都去找Jimmy，立刻改成了三周一次。
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Every now and then Charlie and I catch on early to a tide-like trend, one brimming over with commercial promise. For example, though American Airlines (with its “miles”) and American Express (with credit card points) are credited as being trailblazers in granting customers “rewards,” Charlie and I were far ahead of them in spotting the appeal of this powerful idea. Excited by our insight, the two of us jumped into the reward business way back in 1970 by buying control of a trading stamp operation, Blue Chip Stamps. In that year, Blue Chip had sales of $126 million, and its stamps papered California.
时不时地，查理和我会很早就嗅到一种“潮水般的趋势”，那种满载商业前景的趋势。比如，虽然American Airlines（靠“里程”）和American Express（靠信用卡积分）常被认为是给客户“奖励”机制的开拓者，但查理和我早在他们之前就看出了这个强大点子的吸引力。我们为自己的洞察兴奋不已，于是在1970年就跳进了奖励业务：买下了交易印花公司Blue Chip Stamps的控制权。那一年，Blue Chip的销售额是1.26亿美元，印花在加州几乎“铺天盖地”。
In 1970, indeed, about 60 billion of our stamps were licked by savers, pasted into books, and taken to Blue Chip redemption stores. Our catalog of rewards was 116 pages thick and chock full of tantalizing items. When I was told that even certain brothels and mortuaries gave stamps to their patrons, I felt I had finally found a sure thing.
确实，在1970年，大约600亿枚印花被储户舔湿、贴进集印册，然后拿到Blue Chip的兑换商店。我们的奖品目录厚达116页，塞满了诱人的东西。我听说甚至某些妓院和殡仪馆也会给顾客发印花时，我觉得自己终于找到了一个稳赚不赔的买卖。
Well, not quite. From the day Charlie and I stepped into the Blue Chip picture, the business went straight downhill. By 1980, sales had fallen to $19.4 million. And, by 1990, sales were bumping along at $1.5 million. No quitter, I redoubled my managerial efforts.
结果并非如此。从查理和我踏入Blue Chip的那天起，这门生意就一路直线下滑。到1980年，销售额跌到1,940万美元；到1990年，销售额只剩下150万美元左右在“贴地爬行”。我这个不服输的人，还加倍投入管理精力。
Sales then fell another 98%. Last year, in Berkshire’s $98 billion of revenues, all of $25,920 (no zeros omitted) came from Blue Chip. Ever hopeful, Charlie and I soldier on.
然后销售额又跌了98%。去年，伯克希尔总营收980亿美元里，Blue Chip贡献的收入一共只有25,920美元（一个零都没漏写）。我们仍然抱有希望；查理和我继续硬着头皮坚持下去。
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I mentioned last year that in my service on 19 corporate boards (not counting Berkshire or other controlled companies), I have been the Typhoid Mary of compensation committees. At only one company was I assigned to comp committee duty, and then I was promptly outvoted on the most crucial decision that we faced. My ostracism has been peculiar, considering that I certainly haven’t lacked experience in setting CEO pay. At Berkshire, after all, I am a one-man compensation committee who determines the salaries and incentives for the CEOs of around 40 significant operating businesses.
我去年提到过：在我曾经服务过的19家上市公司董事会里（不包括伯克希尔或其他受控公司），我在薪酬委员会这件事上简直就是“伤寒玛丽”（Typhoid Mary，所到之处人人避之不及）。只有一家公司把我安排进了薪酬委员会，结果在我们面临的最关键决策上，我立刻就被投票否决。考虑到我在设定CEO薪酬方面并不缺经验，我遭到这种“排斥”倒显得很古怪。毕竟在伯克希尔，我就是“一人薪酬委员会”，负责决定大约40家重要经营企业CEO的薪资与激励。
How much time does this aspect of my job take? Virtually none. How many CEOs have voluntarily left us for other jobs in our 42-year history? Precisely none.
这项工作占用我多少时间？几乎为零。过去42年里，有多少CEO主动离开我们去别的公司？精确答案：一个都没有。
Berkshire employs many different incentive arrangements, with their terms depending on such elements as the economic potential or capital intensity of a CEO’s business. Whatever the compensation arrangement, though, I try to keep it both simple and fair.
伯克希尔使用多种不同的激励安排，其条款取决于诸如CEO所经营业务的经济潜力或资本密集程度等因素。不过，无论采用哪一种薪酬结构，我都努力让它既简单又公平。
When we use incentives — and these can be large — they are always tied to the operating results for which a given CEO has authority. We issue no lottery tickets that carry payoffs unrelated to business performance. If a CEO bats .300, he gets paid for being a .300 hitter, even if circumstances outside of his control cause Berkshire to perform poorly. And if he bats .150, he doesn’t get a payoff just because the successes of others have enabled Berkshire to prosper mightily. An example: We now own $61 billion of equities at Berkshire, whose value can easily rise or fall by 10% in a given year. Why in the world should the pay of our operating executives be affected by such $6 billion swings, however important the gain or loss may be for shareholders?
当我们使用激励（而且激励可能很大）时，它们总是与某位CEO“有权负责”的经营结果直接挂钩。我们不发那种与业绩无关、纯靠运气兑现的“彩票”。如果一个CEO打出.300的击球率，他就按.300的水准拿钱——即使一些不受他控制的因素导致伯克希尔整体表现不佳。反过来，如果他只打出.150，他也不会仅仅因为其他人的成功让伯克希尔大赚特赚，就跟着拿到高额回报。举个例子：我们现在在伯克希尔持有610亿美元的股票，这些股票的市值在某一年内完全可能上下波动10%。那么，为什么我们的经营型高管薪酬要因为这种高达60亿美元的波动而受影响？无论这笔涨跌对股东多么重要，它都不应左右经营者的收入。
You’ve read loads about CEOs who have received astronomical compensation for mediocre results. Much less well-advertised is the fact that America’s CEOs also generally live the good life. Many, it should be emphasized, are exceptionally able, and almost all work far more than 40 hours a week. But they are usually treated like royalty in the process. (And we’re certainly going to keep it that way at Berkshire. Though Charlie still favors sackcloth and ashes, I prefer to be spoiled rotten. Berkshire owns The Pampered Chef; our wonderful office group has made me The Pampered Chief.)
你们读过无数关于CEO因平庸业绩却拿到天文薪酬的报道。更少被宣传的是：美国CEO们通常也过着相当优渥的生活。必须强调的是，其中很多人能力卓越，几乎所有人工作时间都远超每周40小时。但在这个过程中，他们往往被像王室一样对待。（而我们当然会在伯克希尔继续这么对待他们。虽然查理仍偏爱“披麻戴孝”，我却更喜欢被宠坏。伯克希尔拥有The Pampered Chef；我们出色的办公室团队则把我变成了The Pampered Chief。）
CEO perks at one company are quickly copied elsewhere. “All the other kids have one” may seem a thought too juvenile to use as a rationale in the boardroom. But consultants employ precisely this argument, phrased more elegantly of course, when they make recommendations to comp committees.
一家公司的CEO特权福利很快会被其他公司复制。“别的孩子都有”这句话，用在董事会里当理由似乎太幼稚。但顾问们在给薪酬委员会提建议时，正是用这个逻辑——当然他们会把话说得更优雅。
Irrational and excessive comp practices will not be materially changed by disclosure or by “independent” comp committee members. Indeed, I think it’s likely that the reason I was rejected for service on so many comp committees was that I was regarded as too independent. Compensation reform will only occur if the largest institutional shareholders — it would only take a few — demand a fresh look at the whole system. The consultants’ present drill of deftly selecting “peer” companies to compare with their clients will only perpetuate present excesses.
披露信息或让“独立”的薪酬委员会成员坐镇，并不会实质性改变不理性且过度的薪酬做法。事实上，我认为我之所以在那么多薪酬委员会里被拒之门外，很可能正是因为别人觉得我“太独立”了。薪酬改革只有在最大的一些机构股东——其实只要少数几家就够——要求对整个体系重新审视时才会发生。顾问们如今那套“巧妙挑选同业公司（peer）做对标”的惯用套路，只会让现有的过度行为延续下去。
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Last year I arranged for the bulk of my Berkshire holdings to go to five charitable foundations, thus carrying out part of my lifelong plan to eventually use all of my shares for philanthropic purposes. Details of the commitments I made, as well as the rationale for them, are posted on our website, www.berkshirehathaway.com. Taxes, I should note, had nothing to do with my decision or its timing. My federal and state income taxes in 2006 were exactly what they would have been had I not made my first contributions last summer, and the same point will apply to my 2007 contributions.
去年，我安排将自己所持伯克希尔股票中的大部分捐给五家慈善基金会，从而落实了我一生计划的一部分：最终把我所有的股份都用于慈善。关于我做出的承诺及其理由，细节已公布在我们的网站上（www.berkshirehathaway.com）。我得说明：税收与我的决定及其时点毫无关系。2006年我缴纳的联邦与州所得税，和我去年夏天没有开始首次捐赠时将缴纳的一样多；同样的结论也适用于我在2007年的捐赠。
In my will I’ve stipulated that the proceeds from all Berkshire shares I still own at death are to be used for philanthropic purposes within ten years after my estate is closed. Because my affairs are not complicated, it should take three years at most for this closing to occur. Adding this 13-year period to my expected lifespan of about 12 years (though, naturally, I’m aiming for more) means that proceeds from all of my Berkshire shares will likely be distributed for societal purposes over the next 25 years or so.
我在遗嘱中规定：我去世时仍持有的全部伯克希尔股票，其变现所得必须在遗产结算完成后的十年内全部用于慈善。因为我的事务并不复杂，遗产结算最多三年就能完成。把这13年（结算最多三年+十年内花完）加上我预计大约12年的寿命（当然，我希望更久一些），意味着：我全部伯克希尔股票的收益，很可能会在未来大约25年内陆续被用于社会公益。
I’ve set this schedule because I want the money to be spent relatively promptly by people I know to be capable, vigorous and motivated. These managerial attributes sometimes wane as institutions — particularly those that are exempt from market forces — age. Today, there are terrific people in charge at the five foundations. So at my death, why should they not move with dispatch to judiciously spend the money that remains?
我之所以设定这样的时间表，是因为我希望这笔钱能被我所认识、并确信其有能力、有活力且有动力的人相对迅速地花出去。随着机构——尤其是那些不受市场力量约束的机构——逐渐老化，这些管理特质有时会衰退。今天，这五家基金会的负责人都非常出色。那么等我去世时，他们为什么不应该迅速行动，把剩余资金审慎而有效地花掉呢？
远离现实的人=忙着作死的人。
Those people favoring perpetual foundations argue that in the future there will most certainly be large and important societal problems that philanthropy will need to address. I agree. But there will then also be many super-rich individuals and families whose wealth will exceed that of today’s Americans and to whom philanthropic organizations can make their case for funding. These funders can then judge firsthand which operations have both the vitality and the focus to best address the major societal problems that then exist. In this way, a market test of ideas and effectiveness can be applied. Some organizations will deserve major support while others will have outlived their usefulness. Even if the people above ground make their decisions imperfectly, they should be able to allocate funds more rationally than a decedent six feet under will have ordained decades earlier. Wills, of course, can always be rewritten, but it’s very unlikely that my thinking will change in a material way.
支持“永久基金会”的人会说：未来必然会出现规模巨大、极其重要的社会问题，需要慈善去应对。我同意。但到那时，也会出现许多超级富有的个人与家族，他们的财富会超过当今美国人的水平；慈善机构可以向他们争取资金。这些出资人可以亲自判断：哪些机构既有活力又有聚焦，最能解决当时存在的重大社会问题。这样一来，理念与效果就能接受一种“市场测试”。一些组织值得获得大量支持，而另一些组织可能已经过了其有效期。即使仍在世的人做决定时并不完美，他们把资金分配得也应当比一个早在地下六英尺处、几十年前就拍板的人更理性。遗嘱当然随时可以重写，但我也很难想象自己的想法会在实质上发生重大改变。
A few shareholders have expressed concern that sales of Berkshire by the foundations receiving shares will depress the stock. These fears are unwarranted. The annual trading volume of many stocks exceeds 100% of the outstanding shares, but nevertheless these stocks usually sell at prices approximating their intrinsic value. Berkshire also tends to sell at an appropriate price, but with annual volume that is only 15% of shares outstanding. At most, sales by the foundations receiving my shares will add three percentage points to annual trading volume, which will still leave Berkshire with a turnover ratio that is the lowest around.
有些股东担心：接受我捐赠股份的基金会在卖出伯克希尔股票时，会压低股价。这种担忧没有必要。很多股票的年度成交量超过流通股本的100%，但这些股票通常仍以接近其内在价值的价格交易。伯克希尔也倾向于以合理价格交易，不过它的年成交量仅相当于流通股本的15%。即使基金会出售我捐赠的股份，最多也只会把年度成交量提高3个百分点；即便如此，伯克希尔的换手率仍将是市场中最低之一。
Overall, Berkshire’s business performance will determine the price of our stock, and most of the time it will sell in a zone of reasonableness. It’s important that the foundations receive appropriate prices as they periodically sell Berkshire shares, but it’s also important that incoming shareholders don’t overpay. (See economic principle 14 on page 77.) By both our policies and shareholder communications, Charlie and I will do our best to ensure that Berkshire sells at neither a large discount nor large premium to intrinsic value.
总体而言，伯克希尔的经营表现将决定股价，而大多数时候，它会在一个“合理区间”内交易。基金会在阶段性出售伯克希尔股票时拿到合适价格很重要，但同样重要的是：新进股东不要买得过贵。（参见第77页的经济原则14。）通过我们的政策和与股东的沟通，查理和我会尽最大努力确保：伯克希尔的交易价格既不会大幅低于内在价值，也不会大幅高于内在价值。
The existence of foundation ownership will in no way influence our board’s decisions about dividends, repurchases, or the issuance of shares. We will follow exactly the same rule that has guided us in the past: What action will be likely to deliver the best result for shareholders over time?
基金会持股的存在不会以任何方式影响董事会关于分红、回购或发行股份的决策。我们将严格遵循过去一直遵循的同一条原则：采取什么行动，最可能在长期为股东带来最佳结果？
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In last year’s report I allegorically described the Gotrocks family — a clan that owned all of America’s businesses and that counterproductively attempted to increase its investment returns by paying ever-greater commissions and fees to “helpers.” Sad to say, the “family” continued its self-destructive ways in 2006.
在去年的报告里，我用寓言方式描绘了Gotrocks家族——一个拥有全美国所有企业的家族，却适得其反地试图通过向“帮手”支付越来越高的佣金与费用来提高投资回报。遗憾的是，2006年这个“家族”仍在延续其自我毁灭式的做法。
In part the family persists in this folly because it harbors unrealistic expectations about obtainable returns. Sometimes these delusions are self-serving. For example, private pension plans can temporarily overstate their earnings, and public pension plans can defer the need for increased taxes, by using investment assumptions that are likely to be out of reach. Actuaries and auditors go along with these tactics, and it can be decades before the chickens come home to roost (at which point the CEO or public official who misled the world is apt to be gone).
在一定程度上，这个家族之所以执迷不悟，是因为它对可获得回报抱有不切实际的期待。有时，这些幻想还带有自利色彩。比如，私营养老金计划可以通过采用很可能达不到的投资假设，来暂时夸大收益；公共养老金计划也可以借此推迟增税的需要。精算师与审计师往往也会配合这些做法，而“报应到来”可能要几十年之后（那时误导公众的CEO或公职人员多半早已离任）。
Meanwhile, Wall Street’s Pied Pipers of Performance will have encouraged the futile hopes of the family. The hapless Gotrocks will be assured that they all can achieve above-average investment performance — but only by paying ever-higher fees. Call this promise the adult version of Lake Woebegon.
与此同时，华尔街的Pied Pipers of Performance（绩效的吹笛人）会不断鼓动这个家族的徒劳希望。倒霉的Gotrocks会被反复保证：他们人人都能获得高于平均水平的投资表现——但前提是支付越来越高的费用。把这种承诺称为“成年人版本的Lake Woebegon”并不为过。
In 2006, promises and fees hit new highs. A flood of money went from institutional investors to the 2-and-20 crowd. For those innocent of this arrangement, let me explain: It’s a lopsided system whereby 2% of your principal is paid each year to the manager even if he accomplishes nothing — or, for that matter, loses you a bundle — and, additionally, 20% of your profit is paid to him if he succeeds, even if his success is due simply to a rising tide. For example, a manager who achieves a gross return of 10% in a year will keep 3.6 percentage points — two points off the top plus 20% of the residual 8 points — leaving only 6.4 percentage points for his investors. On a $3 billion fund, this 6.4% net “performance” will deliver the manager a cool $108 million. He will receive this bonanza even though an index fund might have returned 15% to investors in the same period and charged them only a token fee.
2006年，承诺与费用都创下新高。大量资金从机构投资者涌向“2-and-20”人群。对不了解这种安排的人，我解释一下：这是一种严重失衡的制度——每年无论经理人做得如何，你都要把本金的2%付给他，即使他什么也没干，甚至把你亏得一塌糊涂；此外，如果他赚钱了，你还要把利润的20%再付给他——哪怕他的成功只是因为潮水上涨。比如，一个经理人一年取得10%的“毛回报”，他会拿走3.6个百分点：先从10%里扣走2个百分点，再从剩余的8个百分点里拿走20%（也就是1.6个百分点）；投资者只剩下6.4个百分点。若基金规模为30亿美元，这个6.4%的净“业绩”会让经理人轻松进账1.08亿美元。即便同期一个指数基金可能给投资者带来15%的回报、且只收象征性费用，这位经理人仍然照拿这笔横财。
The inexorable math of this grotesque arrangement is certain to make the Gotrocks family poorer over time than it would have been had it never heard of these “hyper-helpers.” Even so, the 2-and-20 action spreads. Its effects bring to mind the old adage: When someone with experience proposes a deal to someone with money, too often the fellow with money ends up with the experience, and the fellow with experience ends up with the money.
这种荒诞安排背后的“冷酷数学”注定会让Gotrocks家族在长期里变得比它本可以拥有的更穷——如果它从未听说过这些“超级帮手（hyper-helpers）”。即便如此，“2-and-20”的风潮仍在蔓延。它带来的效果让人想起一句老话：当一个有经验的人向一个有钱的人提出交易时，往往最后是有钱的人得到了经验，而有经验的人得到了钱。
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Let me end this section by telling you about one of the good guys of Wall Street, my long-time friend Walter Schloss, who last year turned 90. From 1956 to 2002, Walter managed a remarkably successful investment partnership, from which he took not a dime unless his investors made money. My admiration for Walter, it should be noted, is not based on hindsight. A full fifty years ago, Walter was my sole recommendation to a St. Louis family who wanted an honest and able investment manager.
让我用一个华尔街“好人”的故事来结束这一节：我的老朋友Walter Schloss，他去年刚满90岁。从1956年到2002年，Walter管理着一家极其成功的投资合伙企业；只要合伙人没赚钱，他一分钱都不拿。需要说明的是，我对Walter的敬佩并不是事后诸葛亮。整整五十年前，有个St. Louis的家族想找一位诚实又能干的投资经理人，Walter是我唯一的推荐。
Walter did not go to business school, or for that matter, college. His office contained one file cabinet in 1956; the number mushroomed to four by 2002. Walter worked without a secretary, clerk or bookkeeper, his only associate being his son, Edwin, a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts. Walter and Edwin never came within a mile of inside information. Indeed, they used “outside” information only sparingly, generally selecting securities by certain simple statistical methods Walter learned while working for Ben Graham. When Walter and Edwin were asked in 1989 by Outstanding Investors Digest, “How would you summarize your approach?” Edwin replied, “We try to buy stocks cheap.” So much for Modern Portfolio Theory, technical analysis, macroeconomic thoughts and complex algorithms.
Walter没上过商学院，甚至连大学都没念过。1956年，他的办公室里只有一个文件柜；到2002年，这个数字“暴涨”到四个。Walter工作时没有秘书、文员或记账员，他唯一的伙伴是儿子Edwin——毕业于North Carolina School of the Arts。Walter和Edwin从来不碰内幕信息，甚至连“外部信息”也用得很少；他们通常用Walter在Ben Graham手下工作时学到的一些简单统计方法来选股。1989年，Outstanding Investors Digest问Walter和Edwin：“你们如何概括自己的方法？”Edwin回答：“我们尽量买便宜的股票。”Modern Portfolio Theory、技术分析、宏观经济思考、复杂算法——到此为止。
Following a strategy that involved no real risk — defined as permanent loss of capital — Walter produced results over his 47 partnership years that dramatically surpassed those of the S&P 500. It’s particularly noteworthy that he built this record by investing in about 1,000 securities, mostly of a lackluster type. A few big winners did not account for his success. It’s safe to say that had millions of investment managers made trades by a) drawing stock names from a hat; b) purchasing these stocks in comparable amounts when Walter made a purchase; and then c) selling when Walter sold his pick, the luckiest of them would not have come close to equaling his record. There is simply no possibility that what Walter achieved over 47 years was due to chance.
遵循一套几乎没有真实风险（所谓真实风险，是指永久性资本损失）的策略，Walter在47年的合伙生涯里取得了远超S&P 500的成绩。尤其值得注意的是：他是通过投资大约1,000只证券建立起这份记录的，而且这些证券多数看起来并不起眼。他的成功并不是靠少数几个大赢家堆出来的。可以肯定地说：哪怕有成百上千万的投资经理人按下面方式跟单——a) 从帽子里随机抽股票名字；b) 在Walter买入时以相近金额买入同样的股票；c) 在Walter卖出时也卖出——其中运气最好的人，也不可能接近他的成绩。Walter 47年所取得的成就绝无可能只是运气。
I first publicly discussed Walter’s remarkable record in 1984. At that time “efficient market theory” (EMT) was the centerpiece of investment instruction at most major business schools. This theory, as then most commonly taught, held that the price of any stock at any moment is not demonstrably mispriced, which means that no investor can be expected to overperform the stock market averages using only publicly-available information (though some will do so by luck). When I talked about Walter 23 years ago, his record forcefully contradicted this dogma.
我第一次公开谈到Walter这份惊人记录是在1984年。那时，“有效市场理论”（efficient market theory，EMT）还是大多数顶尖商学院投资课程的核心。该理论在当时最常见的教学版本中认为：任何股票在任何时点的价格都无法被证明是错价的，这意味着仅凭公开信息，没有投资者能被“预期”长期跑赢市场指数（当然，有些人会靠运气做到）。当我在23年前谈Walter时，他的记录以强有力的方式否定了这种教条。
And what did members of the academic community do when they were exposed to this new and important evidence? Unfortunately, they reacted in all-too-human fashion: Rather than opening their minds, they closed their eyes. To my knowledge no business school teaching EMT made any attempt to study Walter’s performance and what it meant for the school’s cherished theory.
那么，当学术界成员面对这份新的、重要的证据时，他们做了什么？不幸的是，他们以一种过于“人性”的方式反应：他们没有敞开头脑，而是闭上了眼睛。据我所知，任何教授EMT的商学院都没有尝试去研究Walter的表现，以及这对学校所珍视的理论意味着什么。
Instead, the faculties of the schools went merrily on their way presenting EMT as having the certainty of scripture. Typically, a finance instructor who had the nerve to question EMT had about as much chance of major promotion as Galileo had of being named Pope.
相反，这些学校的教师们继续兴高采烈地把EMT讲得像经文一样确定无疑。通常，一个敢于质疑EMT的金融学讲师，想获得重大晋升的机会，大概就跟伽利略被任命为教皇的机会差不多。
Tens of thousands of students were therefore sent out into life believing that on every day the price of every stock was “right” (or, more accurately, not demonstrably wrong) and that attempts to evaluate businesses — that is, stocks — were useless. Walter meanwhile went on overperforming, his job made easier by the misguided instructions that had been given to those young minds. After all, if you are in the shipping business, it’s helpful to have all of your potential competitors be taught that the earth is flat.
于是，成千上万的学生走向社会时都坚信：每一天、每一只股票的价格都是“正确的”（或者更准确地说：无法被证明是错误的），而试图评估企业——也就是股票——是徒劳的。与此同时，Walter继续跑赢市场；而且，那些对年轻人灌输的误导性教条，反而让他的工作更容易了。毕竟，如果你做的是航运生意，让所有潜在竞争者都被教导“地球是平的”，对你当然有利。
Maybe it was a good thing for his investors that Walter didn’t go to college.
或许，对他的合伙人来说，Walter没上过大学反倒是件好事。
The Annual Meeting
年度股东大会
Our meeting this year will be held on Saturday, May 5th. As always, the doors will open at the Qwest Center at 7 a.m., and a new Berkshire movie will be shown at 8:30. At 9:30 we will go directly to the question-and-answer period, which (with a break for lunch at the Qwest’s stands) will last until 3:00. Then, after a short recess, Charlie and I will convene the annual meeting at 3:15. If you decide to leave during the day’s question periods, please do so while Charlie is talking.
我们今年的股东大会将于5月5日（周六）举行。和往常一样，Qwest Center会在早上7点开门，8:30会播放一部新的伯克希尔电影。9:30我们将直接进入问答环节（中午在Qwest的餐饮摊位休息吃午饭），问答将持续到下午3点。随后稍作休息，查理和我会在3:15正式召开股东大会。如果你决定在白天的问答期间离场，请务必在查理讲话时走。（他懂我意思。）
The best reason to exit, of course is to shop. We will help you do that by filling the 194,300 square foot hall that adjoins the meeting area with the products of Berkshire subsidiaries. Last year, the 24,000 people who came to the meeting did their part, and almost every location racked up record sales. But records are made to be broken, and I know you can do better.
当然，离场的最佳理由是去购物。我们会帮你做到：把与会场相邻的、194,300平方英尺的大厅，塞满伯克希尔各子公司的产品。去年到场的24,000名参会者已经尽了力，几乎每个展位都创下销售纪录。但纪录就是用来被打破的，我知道你们能做得更好。
This year we will again showcase a Clayton home (featuring Acme brick, Shaw carpet, Johns Manville insulation, MiTek fasteners, Carefree awnings and NFM furniture). You will find that the home, priced at $139,900, delivers excellent value. Last year, a helper at the Qwest bought one of two homes on display well before we opened the doors to shareholders. Flanking the Clayton home on the exhibition floor this year will be an RV and pontoon boat from Forest River.
今年我们还会再次展出一套Clayton房屋（配有Acme砖、Shaw地毯、Johns Manville保温材料、MiTek紧固件、Carefree遮阳篷以及NFM家具）。你会发现，这套房屋定价139,900美元，性价比极高。去年，Qwest的一位工作人员在我们对股东开放大门之前，就买走了展出的两套房屋中的一套。今年在展厅里，Clayton房屋两侧还会摆放Forest River的房车（RV）和浮筒船（pontoon boat）。
GEICO will have a booth staffed by a number of its top counselors from around the country, all of them ready to supply you with auto insurance quotes. In most cases, GEICO will be able to give you a special shareholder discount (usually 8%). This special offer is permitted by 45 of the 50 jurisdictions in which we operate. (One supplemental point: The discount is not additive if you qualify for another, such as that given certain groups.) Bring the details of your existing insurance and check out whether we can save you money. For at least 50% of you, I believe we can. And while you’re at it, sign up for the new GEICO credit card. It’s the one I now use (sparingly, of course).
GEICO会设立展位，由来自全国各地的一批顶尖顾问驻场，随时为你提供车险报价。在多数情况下，GEICO还能给你一个股东专属折扣（通常是8%）。在我们经营的50个辖区里，有45个允许我们提供这项特别优惠。（补充一点：如果你本身符合其他折扣，比如某些群体折扣，这个8%通常不能叠加。）带上你现有保险的细节，看看我们能否帮你省钱。我相信至少一半的人可以省到。顺便也报名申请新的GEICO信用卡——我现在用的就是这张（当然，使用得很克制）。
On Saturday, at the Omaha airport, we will have the usual array of aircraft from NetJets available for your inspection. Stop by the NetJets booth at the Qwest to learn about viewing these planes. Come to Omaha by bus; leave in your new plane. And take all the hair gel that you wish on board with you.
周六当天，在奥马哈机场，我们会照例安排一批NetJets飞机供你参观。到Qwest的NetJets展位停一下，就能了解如何去看这些飞机。坐大巴来奥马哈；开着你新买的飞机离开。顺便说一句，想带多少发胶上飞机都行。
In the Bookworm’s corner of our bazaar, there will be about 25 books and DVDs — all discounted — led again by Poor Charlie’s Almanack. (One hapless soul last year asked Charlie what he should do if he didn’t enjoy the book. Back came a Mungerism: “No problem — just give it to someone more intelligent.”) We’ve added a few titles this year. Among them are Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin, a long-time Swedish shareholder of Berkshire, and Fred Schwed’s classic, Where are the Customers’ Yachts? This book was first published in 1940 and is now in its 4th edition. The funniest book ever written about investing, it lightly delivers many truly important messages on the subject.
在我们“集市”的Bookworm角落里，会有大约25本书和DVD——全部打折销售——主打依然是Poor Charlie’s Almanack。（去年有个倒霉蛋问查理：如果他不喜欢这本书该怎么办。查理立刻回了一句Munger式金句：“没问题——送给更聪明的人就行。”）今年我们又新增了几本。其中包括Peter Bevelin写的Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger——他是伯克希尔一位长期的瑞典股东；以及Fred Schwed的经典Where are the Customers’ Yachts? 这本书最初出版于1940年，现在已经是第4版。它是迄今为止写得最幽默的投资书之一，用轻松的笔触传递了许多真正重要的信息。
An attachment to the proxy material that is enclosed with this report explains how you can obtain the credential you will need for admission to the meeting and other events. As for plane, hotel and car reservations, we have again signed up American Express (800-799-6634) to give you special help. Carol Pedersen, who handles these matters, does a terrific job for us each year, and I thank her for it. Hotel rooms can be hard to find, but work with Carol and you will get one.
随本报告附上的委托书材料（proxy material）里有一个附件，解释你如何获得参加大会及其他活动所需的入场凭证。至于机票、酒店和租车预订，我们再次邀请American Express（800-799-6634）为你提供特别协助。负责这些事务的Carol Pedersen每年都为我们做得非常出色，我在此向她致谢。酒店房间可能不太好订，但只要和Carol配合，你就能订到一间。
At Nebraska Furniture Mart, located on a 77-acre site on 72nd Street between Dodge and Pacific, we will again be having “Berkshire Weekend” discount pricing. We initiated this special event at NFM ten years ago, and sales during the “Weekend” grew from $5.3 million in 1997 to $30 million in 2006. I get goose bumps just thinking about this volume.
位于72nd Street、Dodge与Pacific之间、占地77英亩的Nebraska Furniture Mart（NFM），今年也会再次推出“Berkshire Weekend”折扣价。我们十年前在NFM启动了这个特别活动；“周末”期间的销售额从1997年的530万美元增长到2006年的3,000万美元。光是想到这个销量，我就起鸡皮疙瘩。
To obtain the Berkshire discount, you must make your purchases between Thursday, May 3rd and Monday, May 7th inclusive, and also present your meeting credential. The period’s special pricing will even apply to the products of several prestigious manufacturers that normally have ironclad rules against discounting but which, in the spirit of our shareholder weekend, have made an exception for you. We appreciate their cooperation. NFM is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 10 a.m.to 6 p.m. on Sunday. On Saturday this year, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., NFM is having a special shareholder picnic featuring chicken and beef tacos (and hamburgers for traditionalists like me).
要享受伯克希尔折扣，你必须在5月3日（周四）到5月7日（周一）（含两端）之间购买，并出示你的大会入场凭证。这段时间的特价甚至适用于几家声名显赫、平时对打折有“铁律”限制的厂商产品——但出于股东周末的精神，它们为你破例了。我们感谢他们的配合。NFM的营业时间为：周一至周六上午10点到晚上9点，周日上午10点到下午6点。今年周六晚上5:30到8:00，NFM还将举办一场股东特别野餐，供应鸡肉和牛肉塔可（tacos），以及给像我这样“传统派”准备的汉堡。
At a remodeled and expanded Borsheim’s, we will again have two shareholder-only events. The first will be a cocktail reception from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, May 4th. The second, the main gala, will be held on Sunday, May 6th, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. On Saturday, we will be open until 6 p.m.
在翻新并扩建后的Borsheim’s，我们将再次举办两场仅限股东参加的活动。第一场是5月4日（周五）晚6点到10点的鸡尾酒招待会。第二场是主场庆典，将在5月6日（周日）上午9点到下午4点举行。周六当天，Borsheim’s将营业到下午6点。
We will have huge crowds at Borsheim’s throughout the weekend. For your convenience, therefore, shareholder prices will be available from Monday, April 30th through Saturday, May 12th. During that period, please identify yourself as a shareholder by presenting your meeting credentials or a brokerage statement that shows you are a Berkshire holder.
整个周末，Borsheim’s都会人潮汹涌。为了方便大家，股东价将从4月30日（周一）持续到5月12日（周六）。在这段期间，请通过出示大会入场凭证或能证明你持有伯克希尔股票的券商对账单来表明股东身份。
On Sunday, in a tent outside of Borsheim’s, a blindfolded Patrick Wolff, twice U.S. chess champion, will take on all comers — who will have their eyes wide open — in groups of six. Last year I carried on a conversation with Patrick while he played in this manner. Nearby, Norman Beck, a remarkable magician from Dallas, will bewilder onlookers. Additionally, we will have Bob Hamman and Sharon Osberg, two of the world’s top bridge experts, available to play bridge with our shareholders on Sunday afternoon.
周日当天，在Borsheim’s店外的帐篷里，美国国际象棋冠军Patrick Wolff（两度全美冠军）会蒙着眼同时对弈——而对手们则睁大眼睛——每次一组6人。去年我在他以这种方式对弈时，还一边和他聊天。在旁边，来自达拉斯的杰出魔术师Norman Beck会让围观者大开眼界。另外，我们还邀请了世界顶级桥牌专家Bob Hamman和Sharon Osberg，周日下午会在现场与股东一起打桥牌。
To add to the Sunday fun at Borsheim’s, Ariel Hsing will play table tennis (ping-pong to the uninitiated) from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. against anyone brave enough to take her on. Ariel, though only 11, is ranked number one among girls under 16 in the U.S. (and number 1 among both boys and girls under 12). The week I turned 75 I played Ariel, then 9 and barely tall enough to see across the table, thinking I would take it easy on her so as not to crush her young spirit. Instead she crushed me. I’ve since devised a plan that will give me a chance against her. At 1 p.m. on Sunday, I will initiate play with a 2-point game against Ariel. If I somehow win the first point, I will then feign injury and claim victory. After this strenuous encounter wears Ariel down, our shareholders can then try their luck against her.
为了让周日在Borsheim’s更热闹，Ariel Hsing将从下午1点到4点与任何敢挑战她的人打乒乓球（对不熟悉的人来说叫table tennis）。Ariel虽然只有11岁，却已是美国16岁以下女孩第一名（同时也是12岁以下男女混合第一名）。我75岁那周和她打过一场——当时她才9岁，个子矮到几乎看不到球台对面——我本想手下留情，免得打击她幼小的心灵。结果她把我打得体无完肤。后来我想出了一个计划，让我有机会对付她：周日下午1点，我会先和Ariel打一局“2分制”。如果我侥幸拿下第一分，我就立刻装伤并宣布获胜。等这场“高强度”对战把Ariel消耗一下，我们的股东们就可以再去碰碰运气挑战她了。
Gorat’s will again be open exclusively for Berkshire shareholders on Sunday, May 6th, and will be serving from 4 p.m. until 10 p.m. Please remember that to come to Gorat’s on that day, you must have a reservation. To make one, call 402-551-3733 on April 1st (but not before).
Gorat’s餐厅今年也会在5月6日（周日）再次专门对伯克希尔股东开放，营业时间为下午4点到晚上10点。请记住：那天去Gorat’s必须提前预约。预约电话是402-551-3733，请在4月1日拨打（不要提前）。
In the 2006-2007 school year, 35 university classes, including one from IBMEC in Brazil, will come to Omaha for sessions with me. I take almost all — in aggregate, more than 2,000 students — to lunch at Gorat’s. And they love it. To learn why, come join us on Sunday.
在2006-2007学年，将有35个大学班级（其中包括来自巴西IBMEC的一班）来到奥马哈与我交流。我几乎都会把他们——合计超过2,000名学生——带到Gorat’s吃午饭。他们都很喜欢。想知道为什么，就周日来和我们一起吧。
We will again have a reception at 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon for shareholders who have come from outside of North America. Every year our meeting draws many people from around the globe, and Charlie and I want to be sure we personally greet those who have come so far. Last year we enjoyed meeting more than 400 of you from many dozens of countries. Any shareholder who comes from other than the U.S. or Canada will be given a special credential and instructions for attending this function.
周六下午4点，我们还会再次为来自北美以外地区的股东举办一场招待会。每年都有很多来自全球各地的人参加我们的大会，查理和我希望能亲自问候那些远道而来的朋友。去年，我们很高兴见到了来自几十个国家、超过400位的各位股东。任何来自美国或加拿大以外地区的股东都会得到一份特别入场凭证及参加该活动的说明。
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Charlie and I are extraordinarily lucky. We were born in America; had terrific parents who saw that we got good educations; have enjoyed wonderful families and great health; and came equipped with a “business” gene that allows us to prosper in a manner hugely disproportionate to other people who contribute as much or more to our society’s well-being. Moreover, we have long had jobs that we love, in which we are helped every day in countless ways by talented and cheerful associates. No wonder we tap-dance to work. But nothing is more fun for us than getting together with our shareholder-partners at Berkshire’s annual meeting. So join us on May 5th at the Qwest for our annual Woodstock for Capitalists. We’ll see you there.
查理和我真是格外幸运。我们出生在美国；有非常好的父母，确保我们接受了良好教育；拥有美满的家庭与健康的身体；还天生带着一种“商业基因”，使我们能以一种与那些对社会福祉贡献同样多、甚至更多的人相比，极不成比例的方式获得繁荣。此外，我们长期从事自己热爱的工作，每一天都在无数方面得到一群才华横溢、而且乐观开朗的同事帮助。难怪我们会“踢踏舞着去上班”。但对我们来说，没有什么比在伯克希尔年度大会上与股东合伙人相聚更有趣了。所以，5月5日来Qwest和我们一起参加“资本家版伍德斯托克”。到时候见。
February 28, 2007
Warren E. Buffett
Chairman of the Board
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