2019: Why doesn't Berkshire report more information about all of its subsidiaries?

Jay Gelb: For the past several years, in Berkshire’s annual shareholder letter, there’s been increasingly less detail provided on its operating businesses and financial performance. For example, the company is no longer providing details on the finance and financial product segment, a balance sheet for the manufacturing, service, and retail segment, or a breakdown of float by unit in the insurance business. For a company as large and diversified as Berkshire, why are investors being provided less information than previously?

Warren Buffett: Well, I don’t think we actually provide less information. We may present it in a somewhat different form from year to year. For instance, this year, I started my letter as usual in my mind with “Dear Doris and Birdie”—my sisters—to tell them what I’d say to anyone with a significant proportion of their net worth in Berkshire who’s intelligent but doesn’t know all the business lingo. If I did a decent job explaining, they’d understand what I was talking about.

I tell them what I’d want to hear if I were on the other side. Now, if I were a competitor, I might love to know details of our individual businesses, but for a $500 billion organization, we try to provide a comprehensive picture in three or four pages about each major segment. A 300-page report could give a lot less meaningful information than a 50-page report, and it loses people.

In my mind, I’m writing for shareholders, trying to share what I would if we privately owned the business together. They don’t need to know terms like a combined ratio or an operating ratio. I think that if someone’s overly interested in details, they might miss the big picture. Knowing every detail about our textile business in 1965, for example, wouldn’t have helped in understanding our broader approach to investing over time. The real question is how we’re running their money and what we hope to accomplish. We try to write for the individual. Charlie?

Charlie Munger: Well, I suppose I should be watching every tiny business down to the last nickel, but I don’t want that much detail. I think our competitors would like it, and it wouldn’t do our shareholders any good. So, we’ll probably just keep reporting the way we do.

Warren Buffett: You can see how flexible we are here. (Laughter)