Berkshire Hathaway 2001 Annual Report Download - page 19

18
The Annual Meeting
This year’ s annual meeting will be on Saturday, May 4, and we will again be at the Civic Auditorium. The
doors will open at 7 a.m., the movie will begin at 8:30, and the meeting itself will commence at 9:30. There will be
a short break at noon for food. (Sandwiches can be bought at the Civic’ s concession stands.) Except for that
interlude, Charlie and I will answer questions until 3:30. Give us your best shot.
For at least the next year, the Civic, located downtown, is the only site available to us. We must therefore
hold the meeting on either Saturday or Sunday to avoid the traffic and parking nightmare sure to occur on a
weekday. Shortly, however, Omaha will have a new Convention Center with plenty of parking facilities. Assuming
that we then head for the Center, I will poll shareholders to see whether you wish to return to the Monday meeting
that was standard until 2000. We will decide that vote based on a count of shareholders, not shares. (This is not a
system, however, we will ever institute to decide who should be CEO.)
An attachment to the proxy material that is enclosed with this report explains how you can obtain the
credential you will need for admission to the meeting and other events. As for plane, hotel and car reservations, we
have again signed up American Express (800-799-6634) to give you special help. They do a terrific job for us each
year, and I thank them for it.
In our usual fashion, we will run buses from the larger hotels to the meeting. Afterwards, the buses will
make trips back to the hotels and to Nebraska Furniture Mart, Borsheim’ s and the airport. Even so, you are likely to
find a car useful.
We have added so many new companies to Berkshire this year that I’ m not going to detail all of the
products that we will be selling at the meeting. But come prepared to carry home everything from bricks to candy.
And underwear, of course. Assuming our Fruit of the Loom purchase has closed by May 4, we will be selling
Fruit’ s latest styles, which will make you your neighborhood’ s fashion leader. Buy a lifetime supply.
GEICO will have a booth staffed by a number of its top counselors from around the country, all of them
ready to supply you with auto insurance quotes. In most cases, GEICO will be able to give you a special
shareholder discount (usually 8%). This special offer is permitted by 41 of the 49 jurisdictions in which we operate.
Bring the details of your existing insurance and check out whether we can save you money.
At the Omaha airport on Saturday, we will have the usual array of aircraft from NetJets® available for your
inspection. Just ask a representative at the Civic about viewing any of these planes. If you buy what we consider an
appropriate number of items during the weekend, you may well need your own plane to take them home. And, if
you buy a fraction of a plane, we might even throw in a three-pack of briefs or boxers.
At Nebraska Furniture Mart, located on a 75-acre site on 72nd Street between Dodge and Pacific, we will
again be having “Berkshire Weekend” pricing, which means we will be offering our shareholders a discount that is
customarily given only to employees. We initiated this special pricing at NFM five years ago, and sales during the
“Weekend” grew from $5.3 million in 1997 to $11.5 million in 2001.
To get the discount, you must make your purchases on Thursday, May 2 through Monday, May 6 and also
present your meeting credential. The period’ s special pricing will even apply to the products of several prestigious
manufacturers that normally have ironclad rules against discounting but that, in the spirit of our shareholder
weekend, have made an exception for you. We appreciate their cooperation. NFM is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
Borsheim’ s  the largest jewelry store in the country except for Tiffany’ s Manhattan store  will have
two shareholder-only events. The first will be a cocktail reception from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, May 3. The
second, the main gala, will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, May 5. Shareholder prices will be available
Thursday through Monday, so if you wish to avoid the large crowds that will assemble on Friday evening and
Sunday, come at other times and identify yourself as a shareholder. On Saturday, we will be open until 6 p.m.
Borsheim’ s operates on a gross margin that is fully twenty percentage points below that of its major rivals, so the
more you buy, the more you save (or at least that’ s what my wife and daughter tell me). Come by and let us
perform a walletectomy on you.
In the mall outside of Borsheim’ s, we will have some of the world’ s top bridge experts available to play
with our shareholders on Sunday afternoon. We expect Bob and Petra Hamman along with Sharon Osberg to host
tables. Patrick Wolff, twice U.S. chess champion, will also be in the mall, taking on all comers  blindfolded!