CNBC - Key Persons
Alex Harring is an associate reporter covering markets and investing trends for CNBC.com and CNBC Pro. He previously reported for The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, CNN and The Detroit News. Alex is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he was a news editor and reporter for four years at The Michigan Daily.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy needs to take a page out of Mark Zuckerberg's cost-cutting playbook at Meta
Job Titles:
- Reporter
- Investing Reporter
Brian Evans is an investing trends reporter for CNBC Pro.
Job Titles:
- Berkshire Business Partner
- Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman
Job Titles:
- Reporter for CNBC.Com
- Reporter, Investing Club
Kevin Stankiewicz is a reporter for CNBC.com. Prior to joining CNBC in August 2019, he worked for The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. He graduated from Ohio State University in May 2018.
Job Titles:
- Reporter
- Reporter for CNBC.Com
Paulina Likos is a reporter for CNBC.com. Prior to joining CNBC in July 2022, Paulina was an investing reporter at U.S. News & World Report. She also served as a credit risk analyst at Fannie Mae. Likos graduated from Villanova University in May 2016.
Job Titles:
- American Business Magnate
- Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has amassed a fortune worth more than $80 billion.
He and his Berkshire business partner, Charlie Munger, have invested in everything from Coca-Cola to Heinz ketchup to IBM computers to Dairy Queen and Duracell, not to mention insurance companies, media companies, railroads and real estate.
But it hasn't all been accumulation for Buffett. He has pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to charity.
He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on Aug. 30, 1930, the second of three children of Leila and Howard Buffett. His paternal grandparents had a grocery business. His father was in the investment business and served on the Omaha school board before being elected to Congress in 1942 as a Republican.
At age 11, Buffett made his first stock purchase - three shares of Cities Service preferred at $38 per share. After the stock plunged and then rose to $40, he quickly sold his holdings, only to later see it surge. That taught him a big lesson - it's not a good idea to try to guess when to buy a stock and when to unload it.
In 1962, Buffett started investing in Berkshire Hathaway, a troubled textile manufacturing company in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In what he would later call his "dumbest" stock purchase ever, he took control of Berkshire in 1965 and "fought" the failing textile business for 20 years before finally giving up.
At the same time, however, he started to use Berkshire as a holding company for the many businesses and stocks he purchased over the following decades.
Working together informally for many years, Munger helped modify Buffett's investment strategy, tweaking Graham's philosophy of buying bargain-priced securities and selling them when their prices rose. Munger guided Buffett toward buying excellent companies at a fair price and holding onto them. They both cite the 1972 purchase of See's Candies as a turning point.