1998: What are Berkshire's operating businesses worth?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And the second question is, if I were to write you a check for the operating businesses that Berkshire owns, how much would it have to be?

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CHARLIE MUNGER: By the way, the questioner before this last one asked what is the market value under the hammer of all Berkshire’s operating subsidiaries, and the answer is you have to figure that out yourself. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT: Mr. Nice Guy. (Laughter) Zone —

But we give you the information, incidentally, where your judgment on it should be about as good as ours. There’s nothing mysterious about valuing The Buffalo News, or See’s Candy, or FlightSafety, or Dairy Queen. So you really have the same information we have in that.

I mean if there’s material information that we aren’t giving you about any important Berkshire subsidiary, we’d like to give it to you, because we think you are entitled to have the information. It enables you to value the various pieces.

Because of the aggregate size of Berkshire now, in terms of market capitalization and some of the positions we own, the smaller subsidiaries really cannot have that much effect. We love them just as much. I enjoy all of the businesses we’re in and I enjoy the people that run them.

So, we don’t make a — there’s not — we don’t differentiate in our attitude within the company, but in terms of the actual impact on the valuation of Berkshire, there are a number that really just don’t make that much difference in terms of figuring out whether Berkshire’s worth X or X minus a thousand or plus a thousand, because a thousand now is over a billion dollars, in terms of valuation. A billion is still a lot of money.