June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Warren Buffett, the second-richest American, lives in a $700,000, five-bedroom house on a maple- lined street in Omaha, Nebraska. Neighbor Mike McMullen says he sometimes sees Buffett, 74, warming up his Lincoln on winter mornings. The license plate reads: ``Thrifty''.
Four decades after Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway Inc., now a holding company worth $129.9 billion, his reputation for honesty and openness is threatened as never before by a wave of federal, state and international investigations of Berkshire's General Re Corp., the largest U.S. reinsurer.
``I know it bothers Warren a lot,'' says Robert Soener, 80, a retired Omaha stockbroker and Berkshire investor who has been a friend of Buffett since the 1950s when the two taught an investment class at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. ``Even if he comes out -- and I know he will -- clean as a whistle, there's still going to be that stigma, not to the stockholders, but to the outside.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aCIbyEEIxFBQ
Four decades after Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway Inc., now a holding company worth $129.9 billion, his reputation for honesty and openness is threatened as never before by a wave of federal, state and international investigations of Berkshire's General Re Corp., the largest U.S. reinsurer.
``I know it bothers Warren a lot,'' says Robert Soener, 80, a retired Omaha stockbroker and Berkshire investor who has been a friend of Buffett since the 1950s when the two taught an investment class at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. ``Even if he comes out -- and I know he will -- clean as a whistle, there's still going to be that stigma, not to the stockholders, but to the outside.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aCIbyEEIxFBQ
