2009-03-26 Warren Buffett on Wells Fargo

'Banking is a very good business unless you do dumb things,' says Wells Fargo's largest shareholder.

“银行业是一个非常好的行业，除非你做愚蠢的事情，”富国银行的最大股东说。

SAN FRANCISCO (Fortune) -- As the largest shareholder of Wells Fargo through Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB), Warren Buffett knows the San Francisco bank deeply. He first invested before Wells Fargo was bought by Norwest, where current Wells Chairman Dick Kovacevich was CEO. As part of his reporting for his feature on Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), Fortune Editor at Large Adam Lashinsky spoke at length with Buffett by telephone on March 26.

旧金山（财富）——作为通过伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司（BRKB）持有富国银行的最大股东，沃伦·巴菲特对这家旧金山银行了如指掌。他首次投资是在富国银行被Norwest收购之前，当时现任富国银行董事长迪克·科瓦切维奇是首席执行官。作为他为《财富》杂志撰写富国银行（WFC，财富 500 强）专题报道的一部分，特约编辑亚当·拉辛斯基于 3 月 26 日通过电话与巴菲特进行了长时间的交谈。

Fortune: How is Wells Fargo unique?

财富杂志：富国银行有何独特之处？

Warren Buffett: It's sort of hard to imagine a business that large being unique. You'd think they'd need to be like any other bank by the time they got to that size. Those guys have gone their own way. That doesn't mean that everything they've done has been right. But they've never felt compelled to do anything because other banks were doing it, and that's how banks get in trouble, when they say, "Everybody else is doing it, why shouldn't I?"

沃伦·巴菲特：很难想象一个如此大的企业会是独一无二的。你会认为，当他们达到那个规模时，他们需要像其他银行一样。那些人走了自己的路。这并不意味着他们所做的一切都是正确的。但他们从未因为其他银行在做某事而感到必须去做，而这正是银行陷入困境的原因，当他们说，“其他人都在做，为什么我不应该？”

What about all the smart analysts who think no big bank can survive in its present form, including Wells Fargo?

那些认为包括富国银行在内的大银行无法以现有形式生存的聪明分析师怎么办？

Almost 20 years ago they were saying the same thing. In the end banking is a very good business unless you do dumb things. You get your money extraordinarily cheap and you don't have to do dumb things. But periodically banks do it, and they do it as a flock, like international loans in the 80s. You don't have to be a rocket scientist when your raw material cost is less than 1-1/2%. So I know that you can have a model that works fine and Wells has come closer to doing that right than any other big bank by some margin. They get their money cheaper than anybody else. We're the low-cost producer at Geico in auto insurance among big companies. And when you're the low-cost producer - whether it's copper, or in banking - it's huge.

将近 20 年前，他们也在说同样的话。最终，银行业是一个非常好的行业，除非你做愚蠢的事情。你可以以极低的成本获得资金，而你不必做愚蠢的事情。但银行会周期性地这样做，而且是集体行动，就像 80 年代的国际贷款。原材料成本低于 1.5%时，你不需要成为火箭科学家。所以我知道你可以有一个运作良好的模式，而富国银行比其他大银行更接近于正确地做到这一点。他们获得资金的成本比其他任何人都低。我们在 Geico 是大型汽车保险公司中的低成本生产商。当你是低成本生产商时——无论是铜还是银行业——这都是巨大的优势。

Then on top of that, they're smart on the asset side. They stayed out of most of the big trouble areas. Now, even if you're getting 20% down payments on houses, if the other guy did enough dumb things, the house prices can fall to where you get hurt some. But they were not out there doing option ARMs and all these crazy things. They're going to have plenty of credit losses. But they will have, after a couple of quarters of getting Wachovia the way they want it, $40 billion of pre-provision income.

然后在此基础上，他们在资产方面也很聪明。他们避开了大多数大的麻烦区域。现在，即使你在房子上获得 20%的首付款，如果其他人做了足够多的愚蠢的事情，房价也可能下跌到你会受到一些伤害的程度。但他们没有去做选择性可调整利率的抵押贷款和所有这些疯狂的事情。他们将会有大量的信贷损失。但在经过几个季度将 Wachovia 调整到他们想要的状态后，他们将拥有 400 亿美元的拨备前收入。

And they do not have all kinds of time bombs around. Wells will lose some money. There's no question about that. And they'll lose more than the normal amount of money. Now, if they were getting their money at a percentage point higher, that would be $10 billion of difference there. But they've got the secret to both growth, low-cost deposits and a lot of ancillary income coming in from their customer base.

而且他们周围没有各种定时炸弹。富国银行会损失一些钱。这是毫无疑问的。而且他们会损失比正常金额更多的钱。现在，如果他们以高出一个百分点的利率获得资金，那将是 100 亿美元的差额。但他们掌握了增长的秘诀，低成本存款以及来自客户群的大量附带收入。

Insurance revenues for example, which had double-digit revenue growth in 2008.

例如，保险收入在 2008 年实现了两位数的收入增长。

And I would say that most of the critics of Wells don't even know they've got that business. That business alone is worth many billions of dollars. And their mortgage business, as you can imagine in this period, I mean, the volume that is poring through there, is huge. The critics have been right on other big banks, so I think they're inclined to sweep Wells in as well to some extent. And if you've been right on Citi and you've been right on BofA, it gets easy to say, well, they're all going to go.

我想说，大多数批评富国银行的人甚至不知道他们有那项业务。仅那项业务就价值数十亿美元。可以想象，在这个时期，他们的抵押贷款业务，流量是巨大的。批评者在其他大银行上是对的，所以我认为他们也倾向于在某种程度上把富国银行也包括进去。如果你在花旗银行和美国银行上是对的，就很容易说，他们都会走下坡路。

We own stock in four banks: USB, Wells, M&T, and SunTrust. SunTrust I don't know about because South Florida is going to be the last to come back, and they've got a concentration down there. The other three, they're going to have a lousy year, but they'll come out of it with far more earnings power. The deposits are flowing in. The spreads are wide. It's a helluva good business.

我们持有四家银行的股票：USB、Wells、M&T 和 SunTrust。SunTrust 我不太了解，因为南佛罗里达将是最后恢复的地区，他们在那里有很大的集中。其他三家银行，今年会很糟糕，但他们会以更强的盈利能力走出来。存款正在流入。利差很大。这是一门非常好的生意。

Dick Kovacevich specifically told me to ask you your views on tangible common equity.

迪克·科瓦切维奇特别让我询问你对有形普通股本的看法。

What I pay attention to is earning power. Coca-Cola has no tangible common equity. But they've got huge earning power. And Wells ... you can't take away Wells' customer base. It grows quarter by quarter. And what you make money off of is customers. And you make money on customers by having a helluva spread on assets and not doing anything really dumb. And that's what they do.

我关注的是盈利能力。可口可乐没有有形普通股权益。但他们有巨大的盈利能力。而富国银行……你无法剥夺富国银行的客户基础。它每季度都在增长。而你赚钱靠的是客户。你通过在资产上有巨大的利差并且不做任何愚蠢的事情来从客户身上赚钱。这就是他们所做的。

Incidentally, they won't lend Berkshire money. They're not interested in national credits or any of that stuff where the spreads are narrow. We did a big deal about six or seven years ago on Finova, which we did jointly with Leucadia. And what was then the old First National of Boston sort of headed the deal up, and people would come in for $500 million or $200 million. Wells wasn't interested. There wasn't enough money in it, basically. I got a big kick out of that because that was exactly how they should think. Everybody else wanted to be in it, and they were doing it for 20 basis points or something of the sort. And they'd make commitments for all kinds of credit for 6 or 8 basis points, and the ones that were in the underwriting business, they would do it just get the underwriting.

顺便说一下，他们不会借钱给伯克希尔。他们对国家信用或任何利差狭窄的东西不感兴趣。大约六七年前，我们与 Leucadia 联合在 Finova 上做了一笔大交易。当时的波士顿第一国家银行牵头这笔交易，人们会进来投 5 亿美元或 2 亿美元。富国银行不感兴趣。基本上没有足够的钱。我对此感到非常高兴，因为这正是他们应该有的思考方式。其他人都想参与其中，他们是为了 20 个基点之类的东西。他们会为各种信用做出承诺，6 或 8 个基点，而那些在承销业务中的人，他们这样做只是为了获得承销。

But back to tangible common equity...

但回到有形普通股权益...

You don't make money on tangible common equity. You make money on the funds that people give you and the difference between the cost of those funds and what you lend them out on. And that's where people get all mixed up incidentally on things like the TARP. They say, 'Well, where'd the 5 billion go or where'd the 10 billion go that was put in?' That isn't what you make money on. You make money on that deposit base of $800 billion that they've got now. And that deposit base I guarantee you will cost Wells a lot less than it cost Wachovia. And they'll put out the money differently.

你不会通过有形普通股赚钱。你通过人们给你的资金赚钱，以及这些资金的成本和你借出去的利率之间的差额赚钱。这就是人们在类似 TARP 这样的事情上搞混的地方。他们说，‘那么，注入的 50 亿或 100 亿去哪了？’那不是你赚钱的地方。你是通过他们现在拥有的 8000 亿美元的存款基础赚钱的。我保证，这个存款基础对富国银行的成本会比对 Wachovia 的成本低得多。他们会以不同的方式放出这些资金。

They'll have to work through a lot of this stuff that they inherited from Wachovia. Those option ARMs, they explained exactly how they break them down, and in the end they may lose 3 or 4 billion more. Nobody knows exactly. But I would say that California residential real estate is not deteriorating. It hasn't moved up. But it has flattened out with good volume recently. So my guess is that the option ARMs will work out about as they guessed.

他们将不得不处理从 Wachovia 继承来的许多东西。那些选择性可调整利率的抵押贷款，他们详细解释了如何分解这些贷款，最终他们可能会再损失 30 到 40 亿。没有人确切知道。但我会说，加州的住宅房地产并没有恶化。它没有上涨，但最近成交量不错，已经趋于平稳。所以我猜测选择性可调整利率的抵押贷款的结果会和他们预想的差不多。

What if the Treasury imposes new capital requirements? Will it hamper their earnings power?

如果财政部施加新的资本要求怎么办？这会妨碍他们的盈利能力吗？

I don't think it'll hamper their earnings. But if you make them sell a lot of common equity it would kill the common shareholder. It wouldn't increase the earning power in the future, and it would increase the shares outstanding. Wells, if they want another $10 billion in common equity or something like that in Wells, they'll have it in a very short period of time at this dividend rate. [In March, Wells cut its dividend by 85%.] Wells will be piling up the equity while they're paying nominal dividends. They could afford to pay the old dividend. But since they won't be paying the old dividend, that's $4 billion a year or something that they'll be adding to equity.

我认为这不会妨碍他们的收益。但如果你让他们出售大量普通股，这将对普通股东不利。这不会增加未来的盈利能力，反而会增加流通股数量。富国银行，如果他们想要再增加 100 亿美元的普通股或类似的东西，他们将在很短的时间内以目前的股息率实现这一目标。[在三月份，富国银行将其股息削减了 85%。] 富国银行将在支付名义股息的同时积累股本。他们本可以支付以前的股息。但由于他们不会支付以前的股息，这将是每年大约 40 亿美元或类似的金额被添加到股本中。

I would have been fine if they had just said, 'Look it, we'll quit paying any common dividend until our equity has gone up by whatever it might be, 10 or 15 billion.' And they'd get there in no time. Then they could pay the regular dividend. They elected to do it this other way because everybody seems to be kind of doing it. The idea of forgoing all or most of the dividend for a year to build the common equity ratio up, if that's what the government wants, that's fine. But that isn't really the key to the future of Wells, unless the regulators make it the key to the future of Wells. The key to the future of Wells is continuing to get the money in at very low costs, selling all kinds of services to their customer and having spreads like nobody else has.

如果他们只是说，“看，我们将停止支付任何普通股息，直到我们的股本增加到无论是 100 亿还是 150 亿”，我会觉得没问题。他们很快就能做到这一点。然后他们可以支付常规股息。他们选择了另一种方式，因为似乎每个人都在这样做。放弃一整年或大部分股息以提高普通股本比率的想法，如果这是政府想要的，那也没问题。但这并不是富国银行未来的关键，除非监管机构将其视为富国银行未来的关键。富国银行未来的关键在于继续以非常低的成本吸收资金，向客户销售各种服务，并拥有无人能及的利差。

How is Wells differentiated from the banks you own and the ones you don't?

富国银行与您拥有的银行以及您不拥有的银行有何不同？

Wells just has a whole different attitude. That's why Kovacevich calls them retail stores. He doesn't even like the word banking. I mean, he is looking to have a maximum enduring relationship with many, many millions of people. Tens of millions. And at the base of it involves getting money in very cheap. When you do that that's a helluva start in the business. The difference between getting your money at 1-1/2 % and 2-1/2% on a trillion-dollar asset base is $10 billion a year. It's hard to overemphasize that. He thinks more like Sam Walton than he thinks like J.P. Morgan. I'm talking about the individual there. He's a retailer. He's not trying to influence Washington or be the most important guy on the scene or anything like that. He's just trying to do business with millions of people every day and make a few bucks off of them.

富国银行有着截然不同的态度。这就是为什么科瓦切维奇称他们为零售店。他甚至不喜欢“银行”这个词。我的意思是，他希望与数以千万计的人建立持久的关系。数千万。在这之中，基础是以非常低的成本获得资金。当你做到这一点时，这在业务上是一个很好的开始。在一万亿美元的资产基础上，1.5%和2.5%的利率差异意味着每年100亿美元。这一点很难被过分强调。他的思维方式更像山姆·沃尔顿，而不是 J.P.摩根。我说的是个人。他是个零售商。他并不试图影响华盛顿或成为最重要的人物或类似的事情。他只是试图每天与数百万人做生意，并从中赚取一些钱。

Now that you mention it, Kovacevich has done a pretty good job of annoying Washington, wouldn't you say?

既然你提到这件事，科瓦切维奇确实在惹恼华盛顿方面做得相当不错，你不觉得吗？

That's hard to tell. There's an advantage to being that way too. He's not going to cozy up or be sycophantic toward his regulator, and I would say most bankers probably are now. They need to be. But his strong point is retailing not diplomacy. I kind of like that. It's hard for a guy that knows his institution forward and backwards to have somebody come in that really may be working off a check list or something and is telling him what to do. And I'm sure that Dick gets antagonized by that sometimes. In the end, he's got the record. And he's got the business to back up what he's doing.

这很难说。这样做也有好处。他不会去讨好或谄媚他的监管者，而我会说现在大多数银行家可能都是这样。他们需要这样。但他的强项是零售而不是外交。我有点喜欢这一点。对于一个对自己的机构了如指掌的人来说，很难接受一个可能只是按照清单工作的人来告诉他该怎么做。我相信迪克有时会因此感到恼火。最终，他有记录。他有业务来支持他所做的事情。

To the extent that his tangible common equity is low, a) nobody was even talking about that a year ago. And b) they should be talking about earning power. But it comes about in part because he saved the FDIC's bacon on Wachovia. I mean they had a deal on Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) that had big assistance involved in it, and the FDIC moved about what would have been about 5% of the deposits in the United States without a dime of expense to the taxpayer or the FDIC to Wells. And Wells took it over. And if they'd gone to Citigroup a) they would have looked like idiots, and within a very short period considering what happened to Citi. So to penalize them because they solved the FDIC's problem without cost to the FDIC would be a little crazy. And I imagine that's what gets Dick a little riled up.

在他的有形普通股权益较低的情况下，a) 一年前没有人谈论这个问题。而且 b) 他们应该谈论的是盈利能力。但这部分是因为他在 Wachovia 上拯救了 FDIC。我是说，他们与花旗集团（C, 财富 500 强）达成了一项涉及大量援助的协议，FDIC 在没有花费纳税人或 FDIC 一分钱的情况下，将美国大约 5%的存款转移到了富国银行。富国银行接管了它。如果他们选择花旗集团，a) 他们会显得像傻瓜，并且在很短的时间内考虑花旗的情况。所以因为他们在没有成本的情况下解决了 FDIC 的问题而惩罚他们有点疯狂。我想这就是让迪克有点恼火的原因。

So what is your metric for valuing a bank?

那么，您评估一家银行的标准是什么？

It's earnings on assets, as long as they're being achieved in a conservative way. But you can't say earnings on assets, because you'll get some guy who's taking all kinds of risks and will look terrific for a while. And you can have off-balance sheet stuff that contributes to earnings but doesn't show up in the assets denominator. So it has to be an intelligent view of the quality of the earnings on assets as well as the quantity of the earnings on assets. But if you're doing it in a sound way, that's what I look at.

只要是以保守的方式实现的，那就是资产收益。但你不能仅仅说资产收益，因为可能会有一些人冒各种风险，暂时看起来很出色。而且你可能会有表外项目，这些项目对收益有贡献，但不会出现在资产的分母中。因此，必须对资产收益的质量和数量有一个明智的看法。但如果你是以稳健的方式进行的，那就是我所关注的。

How confident will you be in Wells when Kovacevich retires?

当科瓦切维奇退休时，你对富国银行的信心有多大？

Well, John [Stumpf] is in charge. Dick is a terrific help to John. I play bridge with John on the Internet. He plays under the name of HTUR. His wife's name is Ruth. My bridge partner, who I probably play bridge with four times a week, developed online banking for Wells. A woman named Sharon Osberg. And she's worked with those people. And she told me about John Stumpf ten years ago. I've had some insight through her on these people. But the real insight you get about a banker is how they bank. You've got to see what they do and what they don't do. Their speeches don't make any difference. It's what they do and what they don't do. And what Wells didn't do is what defines their greatness.

嗯，约翰·斯坦普夫负责。迪克对约翰有很大的帮助。我在网上和约翰一起打桥牌。他用 HTUR 这个名字玩。他妻子的名字是露丝。我的桥牌搭档，我可能每周和她打四次桥牌，为富国银行开发了网上银行。一个名叫莎伦·奥斯伯格的女人。她和那些人一起工作过。十年前她就告诉我关于约翰·斯坦普夫的事。通过她，我对这些人有了一些了解。但你对银行家的真正了解是看他们如何经营银行。你必须看看他们做了什么和没做什么。他们的演讲没有任何区别。重要的是他们做了什么和没做什么。而富国银行没有做的事情定义了他们的伟大。

How is John's bridge game?

约翰的桥牌游戏怎么样？

John is a very good bridge player. But he doesn't play as much as I do. I play all the time. He's smart. He's a different personality than Dick. Dick is a real sales person. They both subscribe to the same principles of banking. They just don't think you have to do things that the other guy is doing.

约翰是一个非常优秀的桥牌玩家。但他不像我那样经常玩。我一直在玩。他很聪明。他和迪克的性格不同。迪克是个真正的销售人员。他们都遵循相同的银行原则。他们只是不认为你必须做别人正在做的事情。

First Published: April 20, 2009: 6:13 AM ET

首次发布：2009 年 4 月 20 日，上午 6:13 ET

2009-03-26 Warren Buffett on Wells Fargo

2009-03-26 Warren Buffett on Wells Fargo

'Banking is a very good business unless you do dumb things,' says Wells Fargo's largest shareholder.

Fortune: How is Wells Fargo unique?

What about all the smart analysts who think no big bank can survive in its present form, including Wells Fargo?

Insurance revenues for example, which had double-digit revenue growth in 2008.

Dick Kovacevich specifically told me to ask you your views on tangible common equity.

But back to tangible common equity...

What if the Treasury imposes new capital requirements? Will it hamper their earnings power?

How is Wells differentiated from the banks you own and the ones you don't?

Now that you mention it, Kovacevich has done a pretty good job of annoying Washington, wouldn't you say?

So what is your metric for valuing a bank?

How confident will you be in Wells when Kovacevich retires?

How is John's bridge game?

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