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According to billionaire investor Warren Buffett, he recently chose Howard Buffett, his son, to take over as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway when he finally retires.

You might wonder why Mr. Buffett picked his son to take over as the chairman of the company. Was it preferential treatment? Was it laziness? It was neither those things. As a matter of fact, Buffett had a great reason to make this decision.

His son Howard is a philanthropist, a farmer and he’s also served on Berkshire Hathaway’s Board of Directors for the past 20 years. So, for the last two decades, he’s sat in on all of the meetings relating to the company. He was part of all of the biggest decisions. And when he takes over as chairman, he will be able to make sure the Berkshire Hathaway culture stays the same once his father is finally gone.

When something works, you should stick to it.

By putting Howard Buffett in charge, his father is showing the world that Berkshire Hathaway’s way of doing things is not going to change after he gone. Who would know how Berkshire Hathaway operates better than Warren Buffett’s own son? He’ll be able to preserve the culture of the company while helping the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate grow. That would be very difficult for an outsider to handle.

Howard Buffett received the greatest apprenticeship you could ever ask for. He was able to sit in on everything happening at Berkshire Hathaway, and he observed it all. Howard was part of the most monumental decisions regarding Berkshire Hathaway, and he made them along with his father and the Board of Directors. Some of the decisions they made were: buying Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, the recent acquisition of Heinz and having the foresight to invest in Goldman Sachs while the financial market was in the toilet.

How Can You Give Your Own Family an Advantage Similar to the One Buffett Provided His Son?

If you plan to achieve success, you’ll do so by putting forth a compounding effort over a period of time. That’s why it’s ideal for your children to leverage their effort and time as efficiently as possible. They need to stay focused on a specific area if they plan to become an expert in that field.

Your children will benefit tremendously, and have a serious advantage, if they learn something and know it better than everyone else. It’s important that they stay focused in one specific area where they will have a tremendous advantage over all of the others.

Think about Howard Buffett for a moment…

He’s accumulated a tremendous amount of knowledge over the last 20 years while he watched his father choose investment opportunities. It’s a major advantage to learn something better than everyone else.

It takes a long time to develop the right contacts. It may even take longer to develop trust in the marketplace. Plus, it takes time to learn through experience how to hone your instincts and hunches that will provide real world value in your real life. It will also take time to learn how to work with people. Lastly, it takes time to learn how to use all of the acquired knowledge, insights and hunches and turn them into an opportunity that your experience will provide.

This is more than just a nice way of doing things.

It’s extremely important to your family’s wealth and well-being. If you have a family business, a motivated member will be a great asset. They will bring the right relationships and continuity to the family business.

If your children understand how to run the family business better than anyone else, then they would naturally be the greatest choice to take over the leadership positions within the company.

They have been already established as an expert in the company. They know how to leverage the family business and they are already a part of a trusted team.

It makes sense that family members are in the best position to make use of the advantages because they grew up around the business. They know all of the people involved. They’ll have an easier time learning the business secrets because they are proactively being taught to them.

What If Money Were No Object?

In order for this to work, your children (and their children) need to have an affinity for the family business. If they don’t love it as much as you do, or they don’t have an aptitude for it, they may want to focus their time and talent elsewhere.

Your children should focus on the things they love, as if money were no object. Because here’s what normally happens…

If you pursue a skill to the point of mastery, the money will typically tend to follow. Your kids will be motivated to work longer, spend more time in the field and really stick it out because they are passionate about it.

Having family money is a great way for children to find their passion. But you have to use the money to help them instead of hurt them. There are a lot of options available when you have family money, and it could also lead to lots of distractions. It’s important that the family members are using the money correctly; instead of using this money to harm themselves when it should help them. You wouldn’t want to see your children become spoiled brats. There’s potential to use this money to distract themselves by only choosing hobbies instead of working hard, and this could lead to feelings of sadness, bitterness and uselessness.

You never want your children to feel like they could’ve had their own success if money didn’t get in the way. When Warren Buffett’s son Howard began farming, his father purchased land for him in Tekamah, Nebraska, but he didn’t give him the land outright. He made him pay rent. Warren Buffett did not give his son a free ride. This was a good thing, because Howard is now ready to take over as chairman of one of the richest companies in the world.

If you have children working outside of the family, it’s good to have them provide progress reports in regards to their success. This is especially true if they are using family money. It’s only natural that they would keep everyone abreast of how things are going. Find out what goals they are trying to achieve. Learn about the steps they are taking in order to achieve them. Asking simple questions will keep your children on track and heading in the right direction.

It’s important that your children focus once they figure out what it is they want to do. They must do the work in order to become experts in their chosen field. It’s a great way to become confident, successful, as well as independent. It’s important that any family money being offered will help them achieve this. Don’t allow family money to turn your children away from success.

Warren Buffett, the most famous investor in America, really holds himself to a much higher standard than most. That’s why he describes the business year of 2012 as “subpar” even though Berkshire Hathaway made a total of $24.1 billion for its shareholders. Buffett pointed out that only for the ninth time in Berkshire Hathaway’s 48 years, their book value of 14.4% was actually less than the S&P’s gain of 16%. This is basically how Buffett kicks off his annual letter, which he released on Friday, March 1. If you are interested in investing, then this document is a must read for you and anyone else interested in this field. It’s filled with plenty of Warren Buffett’s homespun, wry style.

Putting aside the “subpar” performance of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s other major regret was the “inability” to achieve a major accomplishment during 2012. “I pursued a couple of elephants, but came up empty handed,” wrote Buffett. He did find his mojo again during the early part of 2013, being part of a blockbuster 23.3 billion-dollar acquisition of H.J. Heinz Co., the ketchup giant. Berkshire Hathaway is putting up $12 billion to purchase half of the company, along with another group of investors led by Brazilian businessman Jorge Paulo, who is buying the other half of the company.

Buffett wrote that now that this deal is done, it’s time for more big game hunting. “Charlie and I have again donned our safari outfits and resumed our search for elephants.” (Charlie Munger is long-time partner to Warren Buffett and friend of many years.)

Without question, the Buffett annual letter to shareholders is quite educational in regards to his philosophy of value investing, which he learned from Benjamin Graham, his mentor and author of The Intelligent Investor, a classic business tome.

Buffett’s investing philosophy is quite simple: Invest in easy to understand companies, for the long-term, with managers who love their business, and the businesses are currently undervalued. Always disregard all flavor of the month trends.

Buffett personally loves to invest in large, extremely reliable American businesses. This explains why the four biggest Berkshire Hathaway investments are in Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola, IBM and American Express. He increased Berkshire Hathaway’s ownership stake in all of these companies during 2012. The Omaha, Nebraska-based investment firm now owns 8.9% of Coca-Cola, 6% of IBM, 13.7% of American Express and 8.7% of Wells Fargo. “Berkshire’s ownership interest in all four companies is likely to increase in the future,” wrote Buffett. “Mae West had it right: ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.’”

Let’s now take a look at some of the major highlights of the Berkshire Hathaway annual letter:

Guessing about Succession: The question asked most frequently in American capitalism is this: Who is going to finally replace the 82-year-old Warren Buffett? Buffett has made it quite clear that his duties are going to be divided among an investment manager – who is responsible for the allocation of Berkshire’s money – and a CEO, ultimately in charge of running the entire $170 billion empire that is Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett confirmed last year that Ted Weschler and Todd Combs, two relatively unknown hedge fund managers, will be replacing him on the investment side. Buffett was very pleased with their performance during 2012.

Weschler and Combs “have proved to be smart, models of integrity, helpful to Berkshire in many ways beyond portfolio management, and a perfect fit,” wrote Buffett. “We hit the jackpot with these two. In 2012 each outperformed the S&P 500 by double-digit margins.” Buffett then added mischievously, in a very tiny font: “They left me in the dust as well.” As a result of this excellent performance, Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have decided to increase their investment funds to around $5 billion. “Todd and Ted are young and will be around to manage Berkshire’s massive portfolio long after Charlie and I have left the scene. You can rest easy when they take over,” wrote Buffett.

On the side of management, Warren Buffett didn’t provide any clues, but he did heavily praise Ajit Jain, a longtime favorite of Buffett who manages the reinsurance group of Berkshire Hathaway worth in the multi-billions. He is widely looked upon as one of the top candidates to take over the CEO position at Berkshire. “From a standing start in 1985, Ajit has created an insurance business with float of $35 billion and a significant cumulative underwriting profit, a feat that no other insurance CEO has come close to matching,” wrote Buffett. “He has thus added a great many billions of dollars to the value of Berkshire. If you meet Ajit at the annual meeting, bow deeply.”

Newspapers: We all know that Buffett loves newspapers, “and if the economics make sense, [Berkshire] will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for purchase of, say, a widget company.” Over the last 15 months, Berkshire Hathaway has acquired 28 daily newspapers and paid $344 million for the privilege, he wrote, even with his long-standing prediction that “the circulation, advertising and profits of the newspaper industry overall are certain to decline.”

Here’s Warren Buffett’s logic: “News, to put it simply, is what people don’t know that they want to know,” wrote Buffett. “And people will seek their news – what’s important to them – from whatever sources provide the best combination of immediacy, ease of access, reliability, comprehensiveness and low cost.” Buffett will readily admit that the Internet has been a disruption on the traditional newspaper business model, causing a drastic decline in revenues and readership. But there’s one particular area in this industry where Buffett sees an opportunity:

Newspapers continue to reign supreme, however, in the delivery of local news. If you want to know what’s going on in your town – whether the news is about the mayor or taxes or high school football – there is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job. A reader’s eyes may glaze over after they take in a couple of paragraphs about Canadian tariffs or political developments in Pakistan; a story about the reader himself or his neighbors will be read to the end. Wherever there is a pervasive sense of community, a paper that serves the special informational needs of that community will remain indispensable to a significant portion of its residents. [...]

Charlie and I believe that papers delivering comprehensive and reliable information to tightly-bound communities and having a sensible Internet strategy will remain viable for a long time. We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership. And the less-than-daily publication that is now being tried in some large towns or cities – while it may improve profits in the short term – seems certain to diminish the papers’ relevance over time. Our goal is to keep our papers loaded with content of interest to our readers and to be paid appropriately by those who find us useful, whether the product they view is in their hands or on the Internet.

Uncertainty: In one of the more surprising parts of the annual Berkshire letter, Warren Buffett called out a few of his fellow US CEOs who have “cried ‘uncertainty’ when faced with capital allocation decisions (despite many of their businesses having enjoyed record levels of both earnings and cash).” Buffett is an optimist for America, who wrote that he is not in agreement with their concerns. “If you are a CEO who has some large, profitable project you are shelving because of short-term worries, call Berkshire. Let us unburden you,” wrote Buffett.

American business will do fine over time. And stocks will do well just as certainly, since their fate is tied to business performance. Periodic setbacks will occur, yes, but investors and managers are in a game that is heavily stacked in their favor. (The Dow Jones Industrials advanced from 66 to 11,497 in the 20th Century, a staggering 17,320% increase that materialized despite four costly wars, a Great Depression and many recessions. And don’t forget that shareholders received substantial dividends throughout the century as well.)

Since the basic game is so favorable, Charlie and I believe it’s a terrible mistake to try to dance in and out of it based upon the turn of tarot cards, the predictions of “experts,” or the ebb and flow of business activity. The risks of being out of the game are huge compared to the risks of being in it. My own history provides a dramatic example: I made my first stock purchase in the spring of 1942 when the U.S. was suffering major losses throughout the Pacific war zone. Each day’s headlines told of more setbacks. Even so, there was no talk about uncertainty; every American I knew believed we would prevail.

The country’s success since that perilous time boggles the mind: On an inflation-adjusted basis, GDP per capita more than quadrupled between 1941 and 2012. Throughout that period, every tomorrow has been uncertain. America’s destiny, however, has always been clear: ever-increasing abundance.

Omaha, Nebraska, Next Stop: The Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting is known as the Woodstock of capitalism – and for very good reason. Each year, tens of thousands of the Berkshire Hathaway faithful make a pilgrimage to the annual meeting of the company, which takes place in Omaha, Nebraska on May 4 this year. It is quite the spectacle: imagine for a moment a Grateful Dead concert populated by hard-core, and in certain cases, the very wealthy, true believers in capitalism. Everyone is always in a great mood. Among this year’s highlights are:

• Berkshire Hathaway’s second annual international newspaper tossing challenge. “Last year I successfully fought off all challengers,” wrote Buffett. “But now Berkshire has acquired a large number of newspapers and with them came much tossing talent (or so the thrower’s claim). Come see whether their talent matches their talk.”
• The “Berkshire 5K” race will start at CenturyLink Center, the arena that holds 19,000 seats and is also the location of the annual meeting. “We will have plenty of categories for competition, including one for the media,” wrote Buffett. “Regretfully, I will forgo running; someone has to man the starting gun.”
• On Sunday, May 5, they hold the Borsheims Fine Jewelry gala. (Berkshire has owned Borsheims, the Omaha-based company, since 1989.) “Around 1 PM on Sunday, I will begin clerking at Borsheims,” wrote Buffett. “Last year my sales totaled 1.5 million. This year I won’t quit until I hit the $2 million. Because I need to leave well before sundown, I will be desperate to do business. Come take advantage of me. Ask for my ‘Crazy Warren’ price.”

The annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting is always a very memorable experience. Buffett can seem like he’s ageless at times, but unfortunately, that just isn’t the case. So if you happen to be a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder in the area of Omaha during the first weekend of May, you never know who you’re going to run into at Piccolo’s or Gorat’s. “These restaurants are my favorites, and I will eat at both of them on Sunday evening,” wrote Buffett. If you decide to go to Piccolo’s, “order a giant root beer float for dessert,” advises Buffett. “Only sissies get the small one. (I once saw Bill Gates polish off two of the giant variety after a full course dinner; that’s when I knew he would make a great director.)”

The shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway may have been seeing glimpses into the future without Buffett for some time now. Most of the deals that Berkshire Hathaway made last year were not directly involving the 82-year-old billionaire investor. They either started with one of the two investment managers Buffett recently hired over the last few years, or they started with one of the subsidiaries. No matter what way you look at it, Berkshire Hathaway did quite well during 2012.

Buffett will release his annual letter to shareholders this Friday afternoon, which is later on today.

The author of Warren Buffett’s Successor: Who It Is and Why It Matters, Jeff Matthews, tells us that last year’s deals are very comforting because they show how Berkshire Hathaway could work once Buffett is no longer there.

“It’s very reassuring. This didn’t used to happen,” said Matthews.

The main thing shareholders will miss most about Warren Buffett is his fantastic judgment and excellent connections. Take the 23.3 billion dollar deal to purchase a portion of H.J. Heinz, a Pittsburgh-based company.

No matter what kind of deal is being made by Berkshire Hathaway, the annual letter written by Warren Buffett is possibly the best read document throughout the entire business world. This is all because of his incredible record of accomplishment and his excellent ability to explain complicated matters in plain English.

There’s no question that shareholders are wondering about the future of the former textile manufacturer known as Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett is getting up there in years. He also recently suffered from prostate cancer, although it wasn’t life-threatening and he seems to have gotten through it quite nicely.

Some of the biggest dollar value deals Berkshire Hathaway made last year are:

Repurchasing $1.2 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares and purchasing $1.5 billion in mortgage loans from Residential Capital.

They also made a $4 billion deal to cover CIGNA Corp.’s insurance losses, and received a $2.2 billion premium in exchange.

Other deals were made but the terms have not been disclosed. Analysts tell us that the Oriental Trading Co. acquisition, as well as the Prudential real estate network will not likely be a major boost to Berkshire Hathaway’s bottom line by themselves.

The only Berkshire Hathaway deals that Warren Buffett likely initiated are the share repurchase acquirement, the acquisition of Oriental Trading Co. and potentially the deal with CIGNA. The rest of the deals started elsewhere. But there’s no question that Warren Buffett signed off on each and every one of them.

Buffett seems to enjoy all of the speculation revolved around who will eventually run the company. Meyer Shields, KBW analyst, said that Buffett probably won’t help narrow down the competition because of his enjoyment of the speculation.

If you follow the company as an investor, you might look upon these four people as the strongest potential candidates: Greg Abel, CEO and President of MidAmerican; Burlington Northern Santa Fe CEO Matt Rose; Ajit Jain, head of the Berkshire Hathaway reinsurance division; and CEO of Geico, Tony Nicely.

Buffett told us that his son Howard, also a member of the Berkshire Hathaway board, is ideally suited as the company chairman.

Berkshire Hathaway also hired two hedge fund managers, Ted Weschler and Todd Combs, who will eventually be able to run the entire Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. They each manage portfolios worth around $4 billion. Buffett continues to make the majority of the investments on behalf of Berkshire Hathaway as he searches for large acquisitions.

Warren Buffett once told us that avoiding dividends during the early years of Berkshire Hathaway gave him the ability to refocus the company’s money on better businesses, just like a person would overcome “a misspent youth.”

The billionaire Warren Buffett, now 82 years old, is focusing on his legacy as he prepares Berkshire Hathaway for new management as his time with the company winds down to a close. Using the annual letter being published on March 1 as a way to outline a dividend plan could show shareholders a way for the next leaders of the company to look at the challenge of allocating profits.

“It may ease the burden on the successors” if they have the ability to pay a dividend, Richard Cook tells us, co manager of the Cook & Bynum Fund, which has Berkshire Hathaway as one of its largest holdings. Berkshire and its subsidiaries “generate a lot of cash.”

Buffett’s annual letter is there to teach Berkshire Hathaway shareholders about corporate governance, investing and business, as well as the annual meetings in Omaha, Nebraska, where the company is located. As Berkshire grew through acquisitions and investment gains, so did its rather large pile of cash, which by the end of September 2012 amounted $47.8 billion. This large sum has made it very difficult to allocate the funds, since it is often difficult to find large investments that are worthwhile, we learned from Buffett himself.

The CEO and Chairman started buying back Berkshire shares in 2011 and used part of the most recent annual letter to explain when share repurchasing made sense. Last May, while on CNBC, he said that he would probably discuss the makings of a logical dividend policy in the upcoming annual letter.

Buffett’s Blessing

“It’s a very sensible move” to discuss when the company should begin paying a dividend, so the next CEO of Berkshire Hathaway will appear to have a Buffett’s blessing, we learned from Tom Russo, currently a partner at Gardner Russo & Gardener, overseer of more than US$5 billion, and that includes Berkshire Hathaway shares. After Warren Buffett is gone, many will have “a tendency to second-guess,” said Russo.

In 1965, Warren Buffett took over Berkshire Hathaway and changed it from a company that made men’s suit linings and textiles, and turned it into a $251 billion company that currently has retail businesses, lots of manufacturing companies, subsidiaries that generate electricity, they sell insurance and haul freight among many other things. His opinions about investments, due to his excellent record of accomplishment, make his annual letters a must read on Wall Street.

In his 1985 letter, Warren Buffett said that dividends make sense when a company’s managers cannot generate adequate returns when keeping the money inside the business. Berkshire Hathaway never paid a dividend because it’s always been able to earn better rates on retained profits, he told us at the time.

Averting Disaster

Buffett once wrote that paying a significant amount of money to his investors could have actually been “disastrous” in the beginning because the three businesses that he and Charlie Munger oversaw in the beginning had very little money. They also incurred losses and were only a fraction of their original size just 20 years later.

“It’s been like overcoming a misspent youth,” said Buffett of the Berkshire Hathaway effort to expand their chocolate making, newspaper publishing and insurance businesses. “Clearly, diversification has served us well.”

Buffett continually finds the best ways to invest the extra cash that Berkshire Hathaway has on hand. Over the last 30 years, he’s amassed tremendous stakes in large companies including IBM, Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo & Co. He even buys whole companies such as General Re reinsurer and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad.

Just this month, he teamed up with Jorge Paulo Lehman’s 3G Capital in a deal worth $23 billion to purchase H.J. Heinz Co. and make it a private company. The deal will provide Berkshire Hathaway with $4.1 billion worth of equity and $8 billion in preferred stock that pays a dividend of 9%, we learned from the regulatory filing.

Charles Munger’s Wish

Warren Buffett points out his own mistakes in his annual letters, and he also uses them to praise his managers like Ajit Jain, his reinsurance chief, and the CEO of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Matt Rose. Warren Buffett relies heavily upon the subsidiary heads to oversee the day-to-day operations of these businesses. This leaves him and Charlie Munger the time they need to allocate the profits properly.

I believe that some of the people reading this article will live to see the day when Berkshire Hathaway pays a dividend. But hopefully it isn’t in the very near future.

The enormous size of Berkshire Hathaway could very well make a dividend a necessity at some point in the future since they may not have a better way to invest the accumulated funds, we heard from Munger at a meeting during 2011 in Pasadena, California.

“I think that some of you will live to see Berkshire pay a dividend, but I hope I don’t,” said Munger, 87 years old at the time, responding to the question of a member of the audience. “You’re saying, ‘Do you predict failure?’ And I suppose I do.”

During last year’s annual letter, Warren Buffett told us that the board chose a manager to take over as the next CEO, but they chose not to identify this individual. For a while now, Mr. Buffett has been allowing his investment managers Ted Weschler and Todd Combs to oversee more of the company’s $88 billion worth of stock.

Stock Rally

As of this morning, Berkshire Class A shares gained 0.5% to reach the amount of $152,650 at the opening around 9:35 AM in New York. Over the last 12 months, Berkshire has rallied for a 29% gain due to the gains in their operating units, a buy back in stock and Bank of America Corp. investment. In the same period of time, the S&P 500 index only gained 10%.

One roadblock to potentially paying a dividend now is that Warren Buffett, as the largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, would have to do something with the payments he earns, said Russo. You probably know that he has pledged the majority of his wealth to charity, but he still has stock in Berkshire Hathaway worth more than $50 billion.

“Warren doesn’t want cash. He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t want the burden of investing it,” said Russo.

Paying a dividend could certainly makes sense once Buffett is no longer leading the firm, and more of the current shares he has passed over to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as his children’s philanthropic endeavors, Russo said. These charitable organizations are obligated to spend the money generated by a dividend, Russo also said.

The mutual fund manager, Cook, said he’d rather Berkshire skip paying a dividend and hold onto the cash for the time being.

“You’ve got a 50 year track record of being the best capital allocator in the world,” said Cook of Buffett. “As long as he’s alive, we think we’re generally better off with him” handling the money.

On February 21, 2013, cofounder of Rap Genius Mahbod Moghadam started up a strange feud with Warren Buffett, billionaire investor, when he tweeted from his handle @rapgenius this extremely profane message: “WARREN BUFFETT CAN SUCK MY ____.” Sending out offending tweets to those people well known in the media is nothing new, but it is rather surprising when it comes from one of the creators of a largely popular website that just received a $15 million injection in venture capital. People will pay attention to these things.

Then just a few hours later, Moghadam announced that he is holding a Warren Buffett diss track contest on Rap Genius. The contestants have to post original lyrics that badmouth Berkshire Hathaway’s 82-year-old Chairman and CEO. The winner of the contest receives a Rap Genius T-shirt. It looks like a $15 million venture capital injection didn’t do anything to improve the contest prizes! Feel free to make fun of Mark Zuckerberg as much as you want for his horrible fashion sense. For whatever reason, Moghadam looks to have taken the role of the eccentric tech entrepreneur to a strange and uncomfortable new level.

Nitasha Tiku, writer for BetaBeat published a very thorough article in regards to the strange vendetta, where she included a Google chat interview with the eccentric entrepreneur, who says of Warren Buffett during the interview, “from a philosophical perspective I hate that fool… He brags about eating at mcdonalds [sic] I loathe him.”

It turns out that Moghadam’s hatred of Warren Buffett started a few years back when Berkshire Hathaway took back their internship offer when they discovered that Moghadam wrote a blog post belittling one of their clients. And another thing, Warren Buffett is friends with his ex-girlfriend’s mother, which could also have been part of the reason he landed the internship to begin with.

This contest definitely has the sense of a public relations stunt, but it certainly feels like the bad blood is for real. There have been commenters on the message boards defending Warren Buffett because he supports higher taxes for the rich. Then again, others have bashed Moghadam because he’s a “bad publicity troll.”

So far, only a few entries have been made into the diss track contest, and all of the entries are poor. Take a look at one entry courtesy of a Rap Genius commenter going by the name jewlove: “the wizard of Omaha? Ha ha/Creating economic blizzards/and a buzzard feasting off the cadavers/of the common folk, with geico.” I can only imagine that the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur both rolling over in their graves.

Far as I can tell, this is the first hip-hop beef Warren Buffett has been involved in. Although he does have a tendency to show up in rap lyrics every once in a while. He hasn’t responded to this as of yet, most likely because he’s so busy acquiring H.J. Heinz Co., using the ketchup company as leverage and generally being an all-around nice guy. But if Warren buffet does choose to reply, it might be in his best interest to let Jamie Dimon take over as his hype man and have Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke officiate a charitable rap battle.

Moghadam probably thinks that his hip-hop fans are going to give him massive credit for bashing the billionaire investor in this crazy contest. But let’s not forget that he’s up against a guy who threw up the diamond sign when Jay-Z’s 40/40 club opened. If you don’t know, now you know.

Very recently, 3G Capital and Warren Buffett have teamed up to purchase H.J. Heinz. And yes, 3G is a private equity firm.

Warren Buffett isn’t really a big fan of private equity, and in the past he has said that these firms are short-term financial engineers who “don’t love” the companies that they purchase. He has even bragged that he’s never previously purchased a company from one of these private equity firms.

So what is the public supposed to think of the idea that Warren Buffett has now teamed up with 3G Capital Partners, a private equity firm? They are jointly purchasing H.J. Heinz Co. in the total amount of $28 billion.

When you really think about it, this move is kind of hypocritical.

In the press, 3G Capital has been labeled a hedge fund manager as well as a private equity firm. Both of these statements are correct from a factual standpoint. The company oversees several private equity funds. The most recent fund had a gross asset value as of last October in the amount of $1.12 billion. Here’s the way 3G describes their family of funds in the company brochure:

The 3G Special Situations Funds’ objectives are to achieve superior long-term capital appreciation by making either controlling or non-controlling (but, in such cases, typically influential) investments in a small number of companies operating fundamentally good businesses with easy to understand business models that are being undermanaged or to which the Adviser believes it can add meaningful value. The 3G Special Situations Funds focus on leveraged acquisitions, recapitalizations, and acquisitions of controlling or influential stakes of businesses in industries where the Adviser has either operating experience or a strong network of contacts within the industry.

It currently appears that 3G charges 20% carried interest for all of these funds, and the management fee is around 1 to 2%. About one quarter of company capital comes from firm principals, and the rest of it comes from a minute group of high net worth Brazilian investors (and there’s even a smaller group of institutional investors).

3G Capital manages a few different small hedge funds through diversified strategies. Some of their funds hold stakes in companies such as SandRidge Energy, Goldman Sachs and Google.

That’s why it might be smarter to describe this company as an alternative investment platform, that also features varying strategies. Basically the way you may categorize Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and The Blackstone Group.

Those people familiar with 3G aren’t often comfortable with these comparisons. However, the company certainly does have a much grander investment horizon than your average and ordinary private equity firm. So in a sense, 3G resembles Berkshire Hathaway more than KKR or even Blackstone.

It hasn’t been possible to determine the investment lifecycle of a private equity fund from 3G, as a way to compare it to the industry-standard of 10 years. As a matter of fact, one source tells us that there might not even be one. If that is the truth, then you’re looking at one major distinction between Berkshire Hathaway and 3G.

If that statement isn’t true, then the only major difference between the 3G and Berkshire is that they raise their money by tapping into rich Brazilian friends instead of university endowments and public pension funds in the United States.

3G certainly doesn’t own any publicly traded securities the way Berkshire Hathaway does (which tells us that there has to be some viable path to investor liquidity).

Looking at the private equity track record of the firm doesn’t seem to remove the label either. As an example, 3G purchased Burger King in 2010 mainly by leveraging bank debt, then returned the money back to the public two years later through a reverse merger (instead of the usual IPO). 3G still has a major stake in Burger King, but there’s nothing novel in regards to a private equity firm remaining in control of our portfolio company three or four years down the line of the initial purchase.

When talking about bank debt, even the deal with H.J. Heinz is technically a leveraged buyout. There’s no question that it includes more equity than a typical mega-LBO with Berkshire Hathaway putting up as much as $12 billion and $13 billion (as well as 3Gs smaller equity slug), but the move will still keep billions of dollars worth of new debt of the books of Heinz.

Maybe Warren Buffett was only being hyperbolic when he speaks of his private equity contempt. Think about this for a second… if he truly believed the things he said, then he would have found another partner with whom he would purchase Heinz.