| Buffett headlines at Berkshire gathering
By Stephen Evans
Sunday, 6 May 2007
Sudan question He comes into his element in the annual meeting when he and his business partner, Charlie Munger, sit at a table in the centre of a basketball hall and field questions. This year, the contentious topic was disinvestment from Sudan because of the atrocities being committed in Darfur. Berkshire Hathaway owns 1.3% of PetroChina, which is also owned by the Chinese government in the shape of the China National Petroleum Corporation. Critics say the corporation supports the Sudanese government by doing business in the country in which hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have been killed. Dissident Berkshire shareholder, Judith Porter, told the meeting in Omaha that it was "the first genocide of the 21st century", and so Berkshire Hathaway should pull its money out of what is in effect a Chinese government company operating in Sudan. She told Mr Buffett: "Your support of divestment will send a signal to China and Sudan that there are costs to continuing this destruction.'' Mr Buffet acknowledged the dire conditions in Sudan but said the company in which Berkshire Hathaway has a stake could not tell the Chinese government what to do. The shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway agreed and the move failed. Man of actions You get the sense that Mr Buffett doesn't feel easy about dealing with pressure group politics. He's a practical man of actions and results. Gestures aren't his style. He expresses his politics more directly with his donations and philosophy of money. He's promised to donate Berkshire stock currently valued at about $30bn to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and about $6bn more to four Buffett family foundations. It's a type of practical politics with which he is more at ease.
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