Warren Buffett's net worth not including his Berkshire Hathaway holdings was about $500 million in early October 2008, when the Standard & Poor's 500 was about where it is today.
That tidbit comes from Andrew Ross Sorkin's excellent "Too Big to Fail," which Buffett himself praised last month on CNBC.
Sorkin, a New York Times reporter and editor, was one of three journalists to query Buffett and partner Charlie Munger at this year's Berkshire Hathaway meeting. The others were CNBC's Becky Quick and Fortune's Carol Loomis.
Buffett appears frequently in Sorkin's book, which focuses on the collapse of Lehman Brothers last fall and the subsequent steps taken by the public and private sector to avert a complete economic meltdown.
Many of the teetering banks pitched Buffett to make an investment, but he declined all offers other than Goldman Sachs', with which he made a sweetheart $5 billion deal.
Sorkin also writes about the role Buffett played as an adviser to then U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Buffett's friend.
On Oct. 6, 2008, Sorkin reports, Paulson received a four-page letter from Buffett. The two had spoken that weekend on how best to implement the recently passed TARP program. Buffett said he had some ideas about how the government could buy up toxic assets from banks.
The plan Buffett laid out in the letter, which he called the Public-Private Partnership Fund, would have created a fund financed by a combination of private and government money that would have invested in toxic assets.
Buffett told Paulson in the letter that he'd "be willing to personally buy $100 million of stock in this public offering." Buffett wrote that the $100 million comprised "about 20 percent of my net worth outside of my Berkshire holdings."
That means Buffett's non-Berkshire personal wealth at that time was about $500 million.
It's unclear whether that figure has changed over the past 14 months. Two factors would suggest the $500 million could still be about right:
1. Buffett wrote in a now-famous Oct. 16 New York Times op-ed that he was buying American stocks in his personal account, and that soon he would be 100 percent in stocks.
2. The Standard & Poor's 500 is now trading at nearly exactly the same level as when Buffett wrote Paulson less than two weeks before the op-ed ran. Wells Fargo, which Buffett has said he was buying for his personal account, is also at roughly levels from last October.
Of course Buffett's non-Berkshire personal holdings are just a small fraction of his overall wealth. He owns about $39.3 billion worth of Berkshire stock. Incidentally, Forbes estimated Buffett's overall net worth recently at $40 billion.
Buffett's personal transactions are really none of our business, but it's still hard not to take notice.
The last I recall reading anything about Buffett's personal wealth aside from Berkshire came in Roger Lowenstein's "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist."
Lowenstein describes how in 1979 Buffett was worth $140 million, but he was paying himself a salary of just $50,000 to run Berkshire (his salary has since doubled). He didn't want to sell any Berkshire shares but needed some money to live.
So Buffett started doing some trading in his personal account. Lowenstein reports that Buffett was more aggressive with his own money, investing in options and perhaps even copper futures, and the money started building up. This paragraph from Lowenstein's book is priceless:
"It was almost frightening, how easy it was," a Berkshire employee said. "He analyzed what he was looking for. All of a sudden he had money." When a friend suggested that Buffett try his hand in real estate, Buffett grinned. "Why should I buy real estate when the stock market is so easy?" According to the broker Art Rowsell, "Warren made $3 million like bingo."
Despite his newfound personal riches Buffett didn't change his lifestyle back then, Lowenstein reports, and you can be sure he won't now either, regardless of how accurate the $500 million figure is for his non-Berkshire personal net worth.
That tidbit comes from Andrew Ross Sorkin's excellent "Too Big to Fail," which Buffett himself praised last month on CNBC.
Sorkin, a New York Times reporter and editor, was one of three journalists to query Buffett and partner Charlie Munger at this year's Berkshire Hathaway meeting. The others were CNBC's Becky Quick and Fortune's Carol Loomis.
Buffett appears frequently in Sorkin's book, which focuses on the collapse of Lehman Brothers last fall and the subsequent steps taken by the public and private sector to avert a complete economic meltdown.
Many of the teetering banks pitched Buffett to make an investment, but he declined all offers other than Goldman Sachs', with which he made a sweetheart $5 billion deal.
Sorkin also writes about the role Buffett played as an adviser to then U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Buffett's friend.
On Oct. 6, 2008, Sorkin reports, Paulson received a four-page letter from Buffett. The two had spoken that weekend on how best to implement the recently passed TARP program. Buffett said he had some ideas about how the government could buy up toxic assets from banks.
The plan Buffett laid out in the letter, which he called the Public-Private Partnership Fund, would have created a fund financed by a combination of private and government money that would have invested in toxic assets.
Buffett told Paulson in the letter that he'd "be willing to personally buy $100 million of stock in this public offering." Buffett wrote that the $100 million comprised "about 20 percent of my net worth outside of my Berkshire holdings."
That means Buffett's non-Berkshire personal wealth at that time was about $500 million.
It's unclear whether that figure has changed over the past 14 months. Two factors would suggest the $500 million could still be about right:
1. Buffett wrote in a now-famous Oct. 16 New York Times op-ed that he was buying American stocks in his personal account, and that soon he would be 100 percent in stocks.
2. The Standard & Poor's 500 is now trading at nearly exactly the same level as when Buffett wrote Paulson less than two weeks before the op-ed ran. Wells Fargo, which Buffett has said he was buying for his personal account, is also at roughly levels from last October.
Of course Buffett's non-Berkshire personal holdings are just a small fraction of his overall wealth. He owns about $39.3 billion worth of Berkshire stock. Incidentally, Forbes estimated Buffett's overall net worth recently at $40 billion.
Buffett's personal transactions are really none of our business, but it's still hard not to take notice.
The last I recall reading anything about Buffett's personal wealth aside from Berkshire came in Roger Lowenstein's "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist."
Lowenstein describes how in 1979 Buffett was worth $140 million, but he was paying himself a salary of just $50,000 to run Berkshire (his salary has since doubled). He didn't want to sell any Berkshire shares but needed some money to live.
So Buffett started doing some trading in his personal account. Lowenstein reports that Buffett was more aggressive with his own money, investing in options and perhaps even copper futures, and the money started building up. This paragraph from Lowenstein's book is priceless:
"It was almost frightening, how easy it was," a Berkshire employee said. "He analyzed what he was looking for. All of a sudden he had money." When a friend suggested that Buffett try his hand in real estate, Buffett grinned. "Why should I buy real estate when the stock market is so easy?" According to the broker Art Rowsell, "Warren made $3 million like bingo."
Despite his newfound personal riches Buffett didn't change his lifestyle back then, Lowenstein reports, and you can be sure he won't now either, regardless of how accurate the $500 million figure is for his non-Berkshire personal net worth.
