Press. voanews.com
Katie Ryerson
and her father took a train from their hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to Omaha,
Nebraska, for her first Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholder meeting, a weekend
the conglomerate's billionaire chief Warren Buffett calls "Woodstock for
Capitalists."
They were part
of a crowd expected to top last year's estimated 37,000. Shareholders filled
the downtown CenturyLink Center's 18,000-seat arena, plus overflow rooms, on
Saturday for the meeting itself with the man dubbed "the Oracle of
Omaha."
"My dad
bought shares of Berkshire for me when I was born," said Ryerson, a
student at Michigan's Hillsdale College. "It is amazing," she said in
an exhibit hall where stockholders thronged to buy products made by Berkshire
units.
"So many
people are dedicated to the same thing. I'm kind of overwhelmed." Buffett
and Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger taught and entertained shareholders
as they answered more than five hours of questions at the meeting, the
weekend's main event.
It was also a
time for many to shop and eat.
Berkshire
Hathaway shareholder Barb Whitelock of Omaha stands features the likeness of
Warren Buffett, at the CenturyLink Center in Omaha, Neb., May 5, 2017. The
Fruit of the Loom unit erected crowd-control barriers after crowds overwhelmed
its display area last year. A line to get inside early on Friday afternoon
stretched 150-deep.
"Very
interesting, like a carnival atmosphere," Les Magee, a retired accountant
from Gainesville, Florida, who was attending his first meeting, said as he
waited on that line. "It's like Disney, because of the lines." See's
Candies sold most of the 21,714 pounds of confections it brought. And by the
time doors were closing on Saturday afternoon, Dairy Queen was down to two
boxes of unsold frozen treats. It had brought 25,000 dessert bars and
Blizzards.
Buffett got his
usual vanilla-orange bar for free this year.
"We're
always going to buy a few things," said Joseph Schwartze, a retired
carpenter from Omaha, after he purchased Ginsu knives. "We never go to the
meeting. He starts talking about derivatives, and I would go to sleep." Other
shareholders get little sleep. As usual, several hundred lined up before
daybreak on Saturday to enter the arena, many to get good seats. They are not
allowed to hold places once inside. But that is not the rule outside, where
Mark Hughes, an investment adviser from Ashton, Maryland, attending his 26th
meeting, said he got on line at 2:15 a.m. "I'm here with a lot of
friends," he said. "I don't trust them to get up in time to get a
good seat."