Buffett gets most no votes on Berkshire board
By one measure, Warren Buffett is the most unpopular director on the board of the company he has built since 1965, Berkshire Hathaway Inc .
While shareholders at Saturday's annual meeting reelected by a wide margin all of the Omaha, Nebraska-based company's directors in an uncontested election, Buffett received more votes against reelection than any other director.
Buffett received 6,232 votes against reelection, or 0.8 percent of votes cast, and 756,041 votes in favor, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Thomas Murphy, a former chief executive of Capital Cities/ABC Inc, and Ronald Olson, a partner at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, received the next-highest no votes, with 5,647 and 5,592, respectively.
Charlie Munger, Berkshire's vice chairman, was next, with 5,219 no votes. In contrast, Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates got just 1,147 such votes.
Buffett controlled 31.3 percent of the voting power at Berkshire, a separate SEC filing shows.
He received the second-most votes against reelection at Berkshire's 2009 annual meeting, trailing Murphy.
Buffett is regarded by many as the world's greatest investor and, according to Forbes magazine, is the world's third-richest person.
The market value of Berkshire, which owns some 80 companies and tens of billions of dollars of investments, is roughly $189 billion, Reuters data show.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; editing by Andre Grenon)
© Copyright Thomson Reuters 2024. All rights reserved.