Berkshire Hathaway: Main Takeaways from the 2023 Annual Meeting

Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting has just concluded. Warren Buffett (92) and Charlie Munger (99) joined by Ajit Jain and Greg Abel on stage took questions from shareholders during a live event in Omaha. Berkshire Hathaway reported a $35.5 billion quarterly profit. Berkshire’s shareholder meeting always attracts throngs of people who admire Buffett and his longtime investing partner Charlie Munger.

Warren Buffett warned a banking crisis is possible, AI may be dangerous, and government overspending will end badly. The important points he discussed -

Buffett criticised the handling of recent tumult in the US banking sector. He said the debt ceiling showdown could bring “turmoil” to the financial system. He criticised how politicians and regulators have handled the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank, saying their “very poor” messaging has unnecessarily frightened depositors. Buffett said the U.S. banking system had become overly complicated — and that he was not surprised that the banks had failed. He said he’d been selling bank stocks, first at the start of the pandemic and more recently over the past six months as banks increasingly face mismanagement and respond to bad incentives. “The American ublic doesn’t understand their banking system — and some people in Congress don’t understand it any more than I understand it,” Buffett said. As of the end of 2022, Buffett’s investments included a 13% stake in Bank of America, 3.2% stake in Bank of New York Mellon, 2.8% stake in Citigroup and 0.5% stake in U.S. Bancorp. Buffett said that if people think deposits aren’t sticky anymore, you’re living in a different era. A new poll from Gallup found that nearly half of Americans say they are now worried about the safety of their deposits, the highest share since the global financial crisis of 2008.