No. of Recommendations: 2
"WHY would you oppose hiring proven money managers with proven track records managing a portion of our cash?"
It would be OK if their fees were low. Yale used outside money managers even though they had David Swensen. Buffett's plan was to use Todd and Ted after he stepped down, but he never gave them much money to manage. The latest estimate of their combined portfolios was $34B.
Whatever Berkshire does they should announce it soon. Stockholders deserve to know who is managing the $700B investment portfolio. That's a pretty big chunk of Berkshire's $698B stockholder equity. Todd is gone, and Buffett steps down in 19 days. Buffett has said that Greg Abel will be responsible for capital allocation, but I take that to mean acquisitions and the like, not day-to-day management of an investment portfolio. I'm sure that Berkshire's equity investment style will remain the same: build a concentrated portfolio of excellent companies when their stocks are available at attractive prices.
As to reporting, I think that Yale did a good job in their annual reports (although I admit that I haven't read them recently). They divided the investments into simple categories, as Berkshire does (equities, fixed income, etc.) and then reported the return of each category for the year and the expected returns for the future. Doing so gives clarity to shareholders; it does not give an advantage to competitors.
