No. of Recommendations: 29
"Can you please explain how a public company authorizing a buyback and acting on that buyback can ever be detrimental to the sellers of that security?" - Harold
This was all explained years ago when Warren was discussing Berkshire buybacks initially. Since you were on The Fool, how did you miss the discussion that went on for months?
Anyway, at the time Warren made it clear that as an insider, he felt he had access to information that others did not have. So he felt that if he was buying (through BRK), he felt like he was taking advantage of the other party through asymmetric information availability. That is why the initial buybacks were only done in a mechanical manner (1.1 and later 1.2 times book value). He even put in some language saying if someone was selling at those levels they should be aware that the buyer could be him (through BRK).
At the time, a vast majority of the Fool posters wanted more aggressive buybacks, but everyone pretty much understood Warren wanting to be noble and not take advantage of exiting shareholders (even though if Warren did not do it, someone was going to). The thought was, one of the reasons to invest in Berkshire was the nobility of the management. It was better to have a management that was too noble for it's own good than not noble enough. So it was accepted as one of Warren's quirks that made him who he was.
