Billionaire investor Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s longtime friend and business partner, has died. He was 99 years old.
Berkshire Hathaway, the investment firm where Munger served as vice chairman, said in a press release that Munger died “peacefully” on Tuesday morning in a California hospital. No cause of death was given.
Charles Thomas Munger, known by his nickname “Charlie”, was born on 1 January 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. Munger served in the US Army during World War II after graduating from the University of Michigan in 1943 at the age of 19. After the war, Munger attended Harvard Law School, graduating with honours in 1948, and moved to Southern California, where he practised real estate law.
Wall Street mourned Munger’s death and his amazing run at Berkshire Hathaway.
“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its current status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” said CEO Warren Buffett in the release.
“For so many decades, the two of them led an investment powerhouse that significantly improved the lives of so many … and in doing so, they repeatedly demonstrated the power of collaboration, synergy and common sense. RIP Charlie,” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, in a post on X.
“His influence went far beyond the investment world. People discovered him thinking they were going to learn how to make money, but they got so much more,” Whitney Tilson, an investor and expert on both Buffett and Munger, told CNN. “He said if all you have is a hammer, the world looks like a nail.”
Munger, worth $2.7 billion according to Forbes, was commenting on global markets just a few weeks ago. For example, he told the Acquired podcast that Buffett’s decision to invest billions of dollars in Japan was “a no-brainer”.
“It was terribly easy money,” Munger said with characteristic pith. “It was like God just opened a chest and poured money into it.”
Buffett’s right-hand man
Munger met Buffett at a dinner in 1959, when Munger was in Omaha for his father’s funeral. Munger and Buffett quickly struck up a friendship.
Buffett said in 2021 that after their first meeting he knew, “I’m not going to find another guy like that ….. We just hit it off.”
Munger officially joined Berkshire Hathaway as vice chairman in 1978, and for most of his career was best known as Buffett’s wise-cracking lieutenant, prone to giving blunt advice on the stock market and the economy.
He was known for his pithy zingers, which delighted Berkshire’s devoted fans. “If people weren’t so often wrong, we wouldn’t be so rich,” Munger said at a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in 2015.
But towards the end of his life, Munger was often in the headlines for controversy. Munger often spoke highly of China’s communist government, which has been criticised by Western governments for human rights abuses. He praised the country despite its crackdown on Chinese tech giant Alibaba, which was a top investment of Munger’s at Daily Journal, a Los Angeles-based newspaper publisher and investment firm that Munger ran from 1977 to 2022.
