|
|
楼主 |
发表于 2010-2-27 16:47:24
|
显示全部楼层
索科尔先生：下一个“奥马哈先知”？
华尔街日报
02-27-2010
The Next Oracle of Omaha: Mr. Sokol?
Move Back to Conglomerate's Industrial Roots Puts Him in Line to One Day Run Buffett's Empire
By SCOTT PATTERSON
WhenWarren Buffett releases his always anticipated annual shareholderletter Saturday morning, he will describe a Berkshire Hathaway Inc.that looks much more like an industrial conglomerate and less like afinancial giant than it has in more than a decade.
The move back toBerkshire's roots came with Mr. Buffett's biggest deal ever, the $26billion acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, finalizedthis month. The change also shines the spotlight more brightly on theman who one day could run this empire, David Sokol.
David Sokol, chairman of a Berkshire unit, has vaulted the corporate ladder and won Mr. Buffett's admiration.
Mr.Buffett has famously said that he sealed the name of his successor inan envelope in his office in Omaha, Neb. But Mr. Buffett will likelyhave two successors, a chief investment officer who will manage thefirm's huge investment portfolio and a chief executive who will be incharge of the roughly 80 companies in the Berkshire stable.
Amongclose watchers of Berkshire, there is a growing expectation that thelatter executive will be Mr. Sokol, the 53-year-old chairman ofBerkshire unit MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., which operates asprawling utility operation in the Midwest. Such speculation shothigher after Mr. Buffett appointed Mr. Sokol to take over flaggingjet-rental company NetJets Inc.
A hard-charging corporate executivewho once recommended books about Attila the Hun to an acquaintance, Mr.Sokol ranks his staff monthly based on who he would fire first. He hasvaulted atop Berkshire's corporate ladder and won Mr. Buffett'sadmiration.
"I don't think there's a record that comes close to thatof David at MidAmerican" in the utility industry, said Mr. Buffett inan interview. MidAmerican earned $1.7 billion for Berkshire in 2008,when it owned 88% of the company, up from $109 million in 2000, whenBerkshire had a slightly smaller stake in the company.
RunningBerkshire, with roughly 250,000 employees, is different from managingMidAmerican, and Mr. Buffett has made the task even more dauntingrecently. The acquisition of Burlington Northern added 40,000 employeesand led to Berkshire's stock joining the Standard & Poor's500-stock index, meaning the new CEO will be beholden to a disparategroup of shareholders, rather than the loyal Buffett followers whoowned the shares before.
Already, doubters have emerged who believe Mr. Sokol won't be able to pull off the deals Mr. Buffett has.
"Areyou going to want to sell your company to David Sokol?" asked JeffMatthews, manager of hedge fund Ram Partners LP, an investor inBerkshire. "No one is going to brag about that."
Some Berkshirewatchers speculate that Mr. Buffett has held back from naming Mr. Sokolhis successor because he remains undecided about whether he is the bestman for the job.
Mr. Sokol declined to comment, and Mr. Buffett declined to comment about his choice of successor.
Messrs.Buffett and Sokol have some things in common. Both live in Omaha. Bothworked as newspaper-delivery boys and as employees of small grocerystores.
And both succeeded early in their careers: Mr. Buffett witha famed private investment partnership, Mr. Sokol as chief of an energycompany while still in his 20s.
After graduating from the Universityof Nebraska at Omaha in 1978 with a degree in civil engineering, Mr.Sokol joined an Omaha architectural-engineering firm and later foundeda waste-to-energy company, Ogden Projects Inc., based in New Jersey.
Eventually,Mr. Sokol had a dispute with Ogden's chairman, Ralph Ablon, over thecompany's investment strategy, according to Mr. Sokol's 2007self-published book on management style, "Pleased But Not Satisfied."He left the company in 1990.
About a year later, he took a job aspresident of JWP Inc., a New York company with businesses ranging fromelectrical contracting to sludge removal. Months after taking the job,he began to unearth accounting improprieties. Mr. Sokol began to raiseconcerns and received late-night phone calls warning him to stop. Heeventually turned over the information at a board meeting in October1992 and resigned.
He returned to Omaha and took a job as presidentof a company later named CalEnergy. Several years later, CalEnergybought MidAmerican as part of an acquisition spree. He also acquiredpricey properties, including a 120-acre farm in Northwest Omaha with ariding track, as well as three Clydesdale horses.
Mr. Sokol is atireless worker, coming into the office at six in the morning andrarely vacationing. In his book, he attributes his hard work to a"driving fear of failure."
Mr. Sokol entered Mr. Buffett's worldwhen MidAmerican's shares tumbled after several geothermal projects inIndonesia were delayed amid the Asian currency crisis.
He becamedisillusioned with the short-term focus of public companies and beganto mull a management-led buyout. Through an intermediary, he broachedthe idea of doing a deal with Berkshire.
Mr. Sokol and the otherMidAmerican managers proved to be tough bargainers. Mr. Buffett offeredto purchase a 75% stake in MidAmerican, then trading for about $27 ashare, for $35 a share. But the management committee refused. Afterseveral weeks, Mr. Buffett finally agreed to raise his bid by fivecents a share.
"I said I'll pay $35.05, and you can say you got the last nickel out of me," Mr. Buffett said.
AsMidAmerican grew under the Berkshire umbrella, Mr. Sokol stayed inclose touch with its day-to-day activities. In 2001, he visited itsDavenport, Iowa, customer call center, whose employees were battered bycomplaints as natural-gas prices spiked in a cold winter, and delivereda pep talk, according to an employee there at the time.
He stepped down as CEO of MidAmerican in March 2008, succeeded by his long-time colleague, Greg Abel.
Duringthe financial crisis, when Mr. Buffett profited greatly frominvestments in struggling companies, Mr. Sokol tried to do the same. InSeptember 2008, the energy firm Constellation Energy Group was facingcrippling financial difficulties. Mr. Sokol, after discussing the dealwith Messrs. Buffett and Abel, decided to make an offer.
He placed acall to the office of Constellation's CEO, Mayo Shattuck III, accordingto Mr. Buffett. The secretary who answered explained that Mr. Shattuckwas in a board meeting and would be fired if she interrupted themeeting.
"You could be fired if you don't interrupt him," Mr. Sokolsaid. He told the secretary to go into the room with a piece of papercontaining two words: David Sokol.
They struck a deal, but it eventually fell apart when Constellation accepted another, far higher, offer.
Mr.Sokol has also spearheaded a big push into wind energy at MidAmerican,a move he has maintained will prove not only environmentally sound butalso?more controversially?profitable.
For now, Mr. Sokol is expectedto focus on NetJets, one of Mr. Buffett's poorer performinginvestments. He has said he thinks the company could return toprofitability this year.
Write to Scott Patterson at scott.patterson@wsj.com |
|
发表于 2010-2-23 13:25:04
发表于 2010-3-8 11:24:38
