2016年股东大会 · 尽职调查对投资决策是否有重大意义？ — 文稿

M10:01

Warren 和 Charlie，你们很有名的一点就是，做一笔交易往往一两天内就定了，除了握个手，几乎什么都不用。

Warren and Charlie, you're famous for making a deal over a day or two with nothing more than a handshake.

你们也一直以主要靠自己做尽职调查、管理开销很小这点为傲。

You pride yourself on the small overhead of doing the due diligence mostly yourself.

其他同样很成功、靠收购扩张的公司，会动用内部团队、外部银行家、顾问和律师，花上好几个月来做尽职调查，评估交易。

Other successful acquisitive companies use teams of internal people, outside bankers, consultants, and lawyers to do due diligence, often over many months, to assess deals.

速度也许是一种竞争优势。

Speed may be a competitive advantage.

你们确实做过一些非常惊人的交易。

You've done some amazing deals.

但你们这样的尽调流程，会不会也让我们承担更大的风险呢？

But does your diligence process also put us at greater risk?

还有，如果有一天你们不在了，你们会建议 Berkshire 怎么调整我们做交易的方式？

And if you're ever gone, how would you recommend Berkshire change how we approach dealmaking?

M20:37

对，这个问题我经常会被问到，有时候尤其是律师会常问。

Yeah, I get that question fairly often, sometimes often from lawyers.

实际上，我们自己——我们之前和律师事务所 Munger, Tolles & Olson 聊过，这也是他们问我的一个问题：为什么我们不做更多尽职调查；真那样做的话，我们可是要按小时付他们费的。

In fact, our own—we talked to Munger, Tolles & Olson, the law firm, and that was one of the questions I got, why we didn't do more due diligence, which we would have paid them by the hour for.

这个，呃，很有意思，我们在收购上犯过不少错误，真是不少。

The, uh, it's interesting, we've made plenty of mistakes in acquisitions, plenty.

而且，我们也因为没有去做一些收购而犯过错。

And we made mistakes in not making acquisitions.

但这些错误，始终都是因为我们对这个行业或者这家公司未来的经济状况判断错了。

But the mistakes are always about making an improper assessment of the economic conditions in the future of the industry or the company.

不是因为租约不好。

They're not a bad lease.

不是因为某一份具体的劳动合同。

They're not a specific labor contract.

也不是因为某个有疑点的专利。

They're not a questionable patent.

不是那种你知道的，美国每一家大公司每做一笔收购时，清单上都会列出来的那些东西。

They're not the things that are on the checklist, you know, for every acquisition by every major corporation in America.

真正重要的不是那些。

Those are not the things that count.

真正重要的是，你有没有看错最基本的经济逻辑，有没有真正抓住它；这个行业接下来大概率会怎么发展；或者说，Amazon 会不会在几年内把他们干掉，诸如此类的问题。

What counts is whether you're wrong about whether you've really got a fix on the basic economics and how the industry is likely to develop, or whether Amazon's likely to kill them, you know, in a few years, that sort of thing.

而且我——我们一直没有发现哪一份尽职调查清单，能真正触及到我们买一家企业时所认为的那些核心风险。

And I—we have not found a due diligence list that gets at what we think are the real risks when we buy a business.

就像我说的，我们犯过——肯定至少犯过六七次错误；如果把那些因为没出手而错过的也算进去，那可能还要多得多。

And like I say, we've made—we certainly made at least, oh, at least half a dozen mistakes, and probably a lot more if you get into mistakes of omission.

但这些错误，没有哪一个是靠做更多尽职调查就能避免的。

But none of those would have been cured by a lot more due diligence.

它们也许能靠我们自己再聪明一点来避免。

They might have been cured by us being a little smarter.

真正关键的，根本不是清单上的那些项目。

It isn't—it just isn't the things that are on the checklist that really count.

判断一个经理人——我准备为他的企业交给他十亿美元，而他会交给我一张股票凭证——判断他以后在经营这家企业时，会不会和过去自己拥有它的时候表现得不一样，这一点至关重要。

Assessing whether a manager who I'm going to hand $1 billion to for his business, and he is going to hand me a stock certificate—assessing whether he's going to behave differently in the future in running that business than he has in the past when he owned it, that's incredibly important.

但这种问题，世界上没有任何一张清单能给你答案。

But there's no checklist in the world that's going to answer that, you know.

所以，呃，如果我们认为尽职调查里有某些项目——顺便说一句，确实也有少数项目会被覆盖到。

So, uh, if we thought there were items of due diligence—and incidentally, there are a few that get covered.

我的意思是，你总得确认一下，他们流通在外的股票数量别是你以为要买的两倍之类的情况。

I mean, you want to make sure that they don't have twice as many shares out as you're buying or something of the sort.

但如果我们认为自己漏掉了某些东西，而那些东西对评估这家企业未来的经济前景很重要，那我们当然会深入去查。

But if we thought there were things that we were missing that were of importance in assessing the future economic prospects of the business, you know, we would by all means drill down on those.

但比如说，你知道，我们当年买 See's 的时候，他们大概有一百五十份租约。

But the question of, you know, when we bought See's, they probably had 150 leases.

呃，你知道，我们买 Precision Castparts 的时候，他们有一百七十家工厂。

Uh, you know, when we buy Precision Castparts, they have 170 plants.

你知道，有些地方肯定会有污染方面的问题。

You know, there's, there's going to be pollution problems at some place.

但那些——那并不能决定一笔三百二十亿美元的收购，在五年后或者十年后看起来是不是一笔好买卖。

And those are— that is not what determines whether a $32 billion acquisition is going to look good 5 years from now or 10 years from now.

我们会尽量把注意力放在那些真正重要的事情上。

And we try to focus on those things.

我确实觉得，至少对某些人来说，我们这种做事方式大概会让事情更顺一些——因为它能减少那种在小事上的争执。

And I do think it probably facilitates, uh, things with at least certain people that our method of operation does cut down— you get into squabbles on small things.

我见过一些交易最后谈崩了，就是因为人们开始为某个无关紧要的点争来争去，然后自尊心也卷进来了，你知道，接着就开始划底线之类的。

I've seen deals fall apart because people start arguing about some unimportant point, then their egos get involved, and, you know, they draw lines in the sand and all of that.

我觉得我们一开始谈交易，就已经占了很大便宜。

I think we gain a lot when we start to make a deal.

通常最后都能谈成。

It usually gets done.

Charlie？

Charlie?

M34:32

嗯，你要是停下来想一想，企业的质量通常取决于更重要的东西，不是看你有没有在某份老租约上把某个 T 划对，或者类似这种事。

Well, if you stop to think about it, business quality usually counts on something more than whether you crossed a T in some old lease or something.

而且，那些收购之后还会留下来继续管理的人，他们本身的素质也非常重要。

And the human quality of the management who are going to stay are very important.

那你要怎么去核实这一点呢？

And how are you going to check that?

靠尽职调查吗，你知道。

By due diligence, you know.

我觉得——我不知道有谁在判断企业质量，以及判断收购之后将领导这家企业的那些人的素质这两方面，整体记录能比 Berkshire 更好。

I think— I don't know anybody who's had a generally better record than Berkshire in judging business quality and the human quality of the people who are going to lead the business after it's acquired.

而且我不觉得换一种方法会有任何改进。

And I don't think it would have improved at all by using some different method.

所以我觉得答案是，至少对我们来说，我们现在的做法就是我们应该采取的做法。

So I think the answer is that, for us at least, we're doing it the way we should.

M25:20

谈判一旦拖得太久，往往就更容易因为某种原因突然谈崩。

Negotiations that drag out have a tendency that they're more likely to blow up for some reason.

我的意思是，人们会在一些很小的点上变得特别固执，固执本身其实很可笑，但人有时候就是会犯傻。

I mean, people, they can get obstinate about very small points, and it's silly to be obstinate, but people get silly sometimes.

所以，我喜欢让事情一直往前推进。

So, I like to keep things moving.

我也愿意对对方表现出一定程度的信任，因为通常你给出信任，信任也会回到你这边。

I like to show a certain amount of trust in the other person because usually trust comes back to you.

但是，你知道，现实是外面确实有一些害群之马，而要识别他们，呃，不是靠看文件就能看出来的。

But the, you know, the truth is there's some bad apples out there, and spotting them, uh, is not going to come from looking at documents.

M35:57

这——

It's—.

M25:58

你真的得判断一下，那个从你这里拿走很多现金的人，未来到底会怎么做，因为我们是要指望他们的。

You really have to size up whether that person who's getting a lot of cash from you is going— how they're going to behave in the future, because we're counting on them.

而且，而且，这种判断和这里面任何其他因素一样重要。

And, and that, that assessment is, is as important as anything involved.

你知道，我们在进入交易之前，对所有数字之类的东西都已经很清楚了。

You know, we know all the figures and everything going in.

我们也知道自己会出什么价。

And we know what we'll pay.

所以我们不希望事情在谈判过程中，呃，卡住、搅成一团。

And so we don't, we don't want things to get gummed up, uh, in negotiations.

只要这笔交易的大条件是对的，那我完全愿意在一些小点上这儿让一点、那儿让一点。

And I'm perfectly willing to lose small points here and there on a deal if I, if I have the deal on the right terms.

我不相信——Tom Murphy 教会了我这一点。

I don't believe in, in making a— and Tom Murphy taught me this.

我的意思是，你知道，你没必要试图把每一个点都赢下来。

I mean, you know, you, you just don't try and win every point.

M16:44

对。

Right.

M26:45

那是个非常严重的错误。

It's a terrible mistake.

但如果你做成的是一笔还不错的交易，后来又发现有些地方稍微有点不一样，那也没关系。

But you make a decent deal, and if you find something that bends a little different some way, that's okay.

如果你觉得那是恶意的，而且这也反映出你正在打交道的那个人的人品有问题，那你就遇到另一个问题了；不过如果你能早点发现这个，反而算你走运。

If you think it's bad faith and gives an indication of the character of the person you're dealing with, then you got another problem, and you're lucky if you find that out early.

Charlie，你还有要补充的吗？

Charlie, any more?

M37:07

这个房间里，有多少婚姻幸福的人，在结婚前认真核查过自己配偶的出生证明之类的东西？

How many people in this room who are happily married carefully checked their spouse's birth certificate and so on?

我猜，我们的方法并不像看上去那么罕见。

My guess is that our methods are not so uncommon as they appear.

M27:24

对，对，这个我会想一想。

Yeah, yeah, I'll think about that.