Charlie Munger, who helped Warren Buffett build Berkshire Hathaway into an investment powerhouse, has died at a California hospital. He was 99.
Berkshire Hathaway said in a statement that Munger’s family told the company that he died Tuesday morning at the hospital just over a month before his 100th birthday.
“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” Buffett said in a statement. The famous investor also devoted part of his annual letter to Berkshire shareholders earlier this year to a tribute to Munger.
Munger served as Buffett’s sounding board on investments and business decisions and helped lead Berkshire for more than five decades and served as its longtime vice chairman.
Munger had been using a wheelchair to get around for several years but he had remained mentally sharp. That was on display while he fielded hours of questions at the annual meetings of Berkshire and the Daily Journal Corp. earlier this year, and in recent interviews on an investing podcast and also with The Wall Street Journal and CNBC.
Munger preferred to stay in the background and let Buffett be the face of Berkshire, and he often downplayed his contributions to the company’s remarkable success.
But Buffett always credited Munger with pushing him beyond his early value investing strategies to buy great businesses at good prices like See’s Candy.
same thing is in your personal world, which is your main goal should be avoiding the catastrophic mistakes that could destroy an investment record, that can destroy a life,” Tilson said.
Munger famously summed that advice up humorously by saying, “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so (that) I never go there.”
Munger was known as a voracious reader and a student of human behavior. He employed a variety of different models borrowed from disciplines like psychology, physics and mathematics to evaluate potential investments.
Munger studied mathematics at the University of Michigan in the 1940s, but dropped out of college to serve as a meteorologist in the Army Air Corps during World War II.
Then he went on to earn a law degree from Harvard University in 1948 even though he hadn’t finished a bachelor’s degree. He co-founded a law firm in Los Angeles that still bears his name, but decided before long that he preferred investing.
Munger built a fortune worth more than $2 billion at one point and earned a spot on the list of the richest Americans. Munger’s wealth decreased over time as he gave more of his fortune away, but the ever increasing value of Berkshire’s stock kept him wealthy.
Munger has given significant gifts to Harvard-Westlake, Stanford University Law School, the University of Michigan and the Huntington Library as well as other charities. He also gave a significant portion of his Berkshire stock to his eight children after his wife died in 2010.
Munger also served on the boards of Good Samaritan Hospital and the private Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. And Munger served on the board of Costco Wholesale Corp. and for years as chairman of the Daily Journal Corp.