For subsidiaries and portfolio companies, Warren Buffett sees their shareholders as partners. He considers them as owner-partners and himself and other managers at Berkshire Hathaway as managing-partners. This is not just a simple way to convince shareholders and potential shareholders to invest in the company, since Warren Buffett invested 99% of his net worth in Berkshire Hathaway and Charlie Munger’s (Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway) family fortune is for more than 90% invested in the company. Furthermore relatives of Warren Buffett also considerably invested in stocks of the company. These facts show that the top-mangers of Berkshire Hathaway have a lot of long term confidence in the company, since a lot of their wealth is invested in stocks of the company, and that are not looking for some short-term return, which regularly occurs when managers are given large stock options as bonuses.

Berkshire Hathaway owns a lot of subsidiaries, but for Warren Buffett’s there is no need to intervene in every detail, he argues the following: “they were managerial stars long before they knew us, and our main contribution has been to not get in their way”.