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1999年股东大会 · 巴菲特投资美国之外的国家时,有哪些选择标准?

28 段 · 2 位说话人 · 原片 2:57
M1
M10:00

我叫 James Klaas,我是从 New York City 来的。

My name is James Klaas, and I am here from New York City.

Buffett 先生,Munger 先生,今天我们已经听你们谈到几个美国之外的国家了。我的问题是,如果你们要直接投资美国以外的股票,你们对整个市场会有什么要求?

Mr. Buffett, Mr. Munger, today we've already heard you talk about a few countries outside of the U.S. here, and my question is, if you were directly investing in equities outside the United States, what would be your requirements for the market as a whole?

我指的是像会计体系的透明度、市场的广度和流动性、股东的权利、货币的稳定性这些方面。要是可以的话,也希望你们能提几个这样的国家。

And by this, I mean things like the transparency of the accounting system, the breadth and liquidity in the market, the rights of shareholders, the stability of the currency, and it'd be nice if you'd mention a few of these countries.

另外再补充一个小问题,就是对于这些国家的公司,你们觉得 Form 20-F 里面和 U.S. GAAP 的调节,到底有多大参考价值?

Kind of just a little addendum there is, for the companies in these countries, how relevant do you believe the reconciliation to U.S. GAAP contained in Form 20-F really is?
M2
M20:42

嗯,答案是,你提到的这些点,大多数我们都会关注。

Well, the answer is most of those points you mentioned would be of interest to us.

凡是市场规模不够大的,我们肯定得先排除掉。

We'd have to rule out anything where the markets aren't big enough.

我的意思是,我们希望在任何一笔单独投资里,至少投进去几亿美元。

I mean, we are looking to put hundreds of millions of dollars into any single investment at a minimum.

当然,我们通常会把五亿美元当成一个最低标准来考虑。

Certainly, we think in terms of $500 million as being a minimum.

不过我们也会有例外。

We make exceptions to that.

但这样一来,很多很多公司就都会被排除在外。

And that's going to rule out a great many companies.

会计透明度和会计规则,我们当然在乎,不过我们可以在脑子里自己做调整。

Transparency of accounting and accounting rules, we care about that, but we can make adjustments mentally.

某些方面上,我们甚至可能会觉得,有些国家的会计处理比美国这边还更好。

In some respects, we may think in certain countries accounting is better than here.

所以,只要我们理解那个会计体系,我们脑子里还是会用同样的一套折现模型去看:这门生意未来很多年到底能产生多少现金,又需要继续投进去多少资金。

And so, as long as we understand the accounting system, we will be looking toward the same kind of a discount model in our mind of how much cash is this business going to generate over years and how much is going to have to be put into it.

这和我们在美国这边做判断时,用的是同一种计算方式。

And it's the same sort of calculation that goes into our thinking here.

而且在美国这边,我们思考时也不是严格照着 GAAP 会计来,所以只要我们理解这些会计差异,这些差异本身不会困扰我们。

And here we don't follow strictly GAAP accounting in our thinking, so accounting differences would not bother us as long as we understood those accounting differences.

还有你提到的税务细节,以及公司治理。

The nuances of taxes, the corporate governance that you mentioned.

这些都可能带来影响。

Could make a difference.

如果我们觉得某个地方的公司治理明显比美国这边差很多,那我们就得把这个因素调整进去。

If we thought corporate governance was far inferior to here, we'd have to make an adjustment for that fact.

不过我会说,在大多数主要国家里,只要那个国家的股市规模够大,足够让我们建立一个真正有分量的仓位,那我们都有可能投资。

But I would say that in most of the major countries, the countries that have stock markets that are big enough so we could take a real position, it's a possibility that we would invest in any of them.

像 Japan、Germany、France、England 这些主要市场,我们都不会先入为主地排除。

We wouldn't rule out, you know, Japan, Germany, France, England, the major markets.

不过要认识到一点,在全世界所有股票市场里,大概有百分之五十三的市值是在 U.S. market。

Now, it's important to recognize that in all the world's stock markets, something like 53% of the value is in the U.S. market.

也就是说,美国只占全球人口的百分之四点五,但所有上市公司的总价值里,有百分之五十三是由 U.S. market 里的公司构成的。

I mean, here we have 4.5% of the world's population, but 53% of the value of all public companies is represented with companies in the U.S. market.

所以我们本身就在这块大蛋糕里占了很大一部分。

So we are a big part of the pie.

只要说的是那些规模足够大、能让我们投进去真金白银的市场,我们非常愿意去看剩下几乎所有那部分蛋糕。

We're very willing to look at almost all the rest of the pie as long as we're talking about markets that are big enough to let us put real money into them.

Charlie?

Charlie?
M1
M12:51

嗯,我们并没有什么规则说不可以。

Well, we don't have a rule against it.

那我们还能再说什么呢?

What more can we say?

我们可以说 zone 2。

We can say zone 2.