- Mohnish Pabrai provided some fresh insights into Charlie Munger in a recent podcast interview.
- Warren Buffett's famously brash business partner is deeply humble and empathetic, Pabrai said.
- Munger worried about Berkshire Hathaway's lack of purchases during the pandemic, Pabrai revealed.
Mohnish Pabrai, a close friend of Charlie Munger, offered several personal insights into Warren Buffett's business partner during a recent episode of the "Richer, Wiser, Happier" podcast.
The Pabrai Investment Funds boss described Munger, who's famously blunt and often critical, as deeply humble and empathetic. The 98-year-old investor and Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman also swears a lot, reads constantly, and can analyze businesses in seconds, Pabrai said.
Munger fretted about Berkshire's lack of capital deployment during the pandemic, and clashed with Buffett over investing in Costco and BYD, Pabrai revealed.
Here are Pabrai's 9 best quotes, lightly edited for length and clarity:
1. "Warren and Charlie genuinely think they're the same as us, even though they've accomplished so much and they've done so much. They really don't have an ego about it."
2. "Every time I met God, the f-word just flowed freely. I'm actually surprised that at the Berkshire meeting or the Daily Journal meeting, there's no f-word because it's so natural, it's the way he speaks. He has never had an interaction with me where there wasn't colorful language." (Pabrai was referring to Munger as "God.")
3. "There's a big stack of books and other reading materials on one side of him, and there's a big stack of books on the other side. Charlie's like an assembly line, devouring. There's an engine of these things running through from the unread pile to the read pile."
4. "He always moaned and groaned, saying, 'We've got so much money, but we can't find anything to buy.' Or sometimes he told me, 'Warren's not even excited about buying Berkshire stock at current prices.'" (Pabrai was recalling his conversations with Munger over the past year or two.)
5. "One of the areas where they diverged was Costco. Charlie tried to have Berkshire take a much larger position in Costco. From Warren's perspective, it was too expensive. Charlie would always say, 'Well, for some things you pay up.'" (Berkshire sold a $1.3 billion stake in Costco in the third quarter of 2021.)
6. "Charlie told Warren that [BYD CEO] Wang Chuanfu is like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Bill Gates all in the same person. Warren invested after he made the third comment, but he didn't use his own money. It's kind of like kids running a lemonade stand, the way they talk about it." (Pabrai noted that Buffett invested in electric-vehicle maker BYD via MidAmerican Energy, one of Berkshire's majority-owned subsidiaries. Berkshire has made a 30-fold return on the bet.
7. "Sometimes I bring up businesses to Charlie that I'm looking at. He may have never looked at the business, but he's done with it in about 10 seconds. I've seen the brain working; it's amazing how it slices through all the models. I've been looking at a business for weeks, and what he comes up with eluded me."
8. "Charlie is a very different person when I'm playing bridge with him, or when I'm having dinner with him, versus at the Berkshire meeting, on stage, and so on. They're two very different people. He has a very high degree of emotions, but he's able to control them. I have had a lot of great input into struggles I had in my personal life from Charlie, where I found that the empathy level was really high."
9. "Warren and Charlie are able to understand humans so well. They're so good at understanding the human dynamic. If I thought Charlie was a great investor, his ability to help me with my personal problems was off the charts."
Read more: Insider recently interviewed the CEOs of 5 Berkshire Hathaway businesses: See's Candies, Dairy Queen, Borsheims, Cort, and Brooks Running. They offered a rare glimpse inside Warren Buffett's company, and shared how they're dealing with the pandemic and inflation.
