Warren Buffett greets shareholders Saturday in Omaha.
Warren Buffett greets shareholders Saturday in Omaha. (Rick Wilking, Reuters)

OMAHA — Before facing questions from a crowd of more than 30,000, billionaire Warren Buffett started Saturday being mobbed by fans at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting.

Admirers held their cellphones and iPads in the air as they surrounded Buffett in the meeting's 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall. Security guards created a buffer around Buffett as he visited displays selling Berkshire's See's Candy, explaining BNSF railroad's virtues and highlighting some of the company's other 80-plus subsidiaries.

Josh Miller, 11, of Maple Grove, Minn., couldn't see over the throng of people, reporters and cameras that moved through the exhibition floor crowd. But he knew who was at the center.

"Warren! Warren!" he called, holding up his iPad to get a shot of the Oracle of Omaha.

The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting began humbly in 1982 with a crowd of 15 in an insurance company cafeteria. It has been growing steadily as the company's stock price rose to become the most expensive in the U.S., reaching $162,904 for a Class A share on Friday.

Now the annual meeting regularly fills Omaha's 18,300-seat arena and every nearby overflow room. Buffett likes to call it "Woodstock for Capitalists."

It's the one day of the year when the 82-year-old Buffett gets treated like a rock star while his friend Bill Gates, who serves on Berkshire's board, can wander through the crowd without much recognition.


Buffett again shared the stage with his 89-year-old business partner, Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger, to answer questions from shareholders, journalists and financial analysts for six hours.

Some of the questions focused on the future of Berkshire after Buffett and Munger are gone, but mostly the questioners wanted to hear what the two men thought about the economy, the Federal Reserve and life in general.

Buffett said he thinks Berkshire will continue to thrive after he's gone because the company's employees and managers will resist any attempt to change the way it runs.

"The key is preserving the culture and having a successor as CEO who is smart and energetic," Buffett said.