By Anupreeta Das
One morning in late 2011, shortly after he bought the Omaha
World-Herald newspaper, Warren Buffett stopped by the desk of his
second assistant, Carrie Sova, with an idea.
Mr. Buffett, a former paperboy, thought it would be "fun" if
shareholders of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. got to test their
newspaper-tossing skills against his at the following year's annual
meeting.
The company held its first paper toss in May 2012, launching an
annual tradition and with it the event-planning career of a woman
the Berkshire chairman and CEO now calls the "ringmaster."
Berkshire's annual meeting stands alone. Part
question-and-answer session and part trade show, it offers
attendees not just a chance to listen to Mr. Buffett and his
partner, Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, but also to browse and buy
products from Berkshire's ever-expanding collection of businesses.
About a decade ago as the event was beginning to draw tens of
thousands of people to Omaha, Neb., Mr. Buffett created the role of
meeting planner to oversee all the duties, from mailing credentials
to transporting steers from Texas to a pen in the exhibition
hall.
Four years ago with the circus format already in place, Mr.
Buffett approached Ms. Sova about becoming the ringmaster. She
"jumped at the chance," according to one of Mr. Buffett's annual
letters, and since then she has been trying to turn increasingly
ambitious ideas into reality. One year that meant figuring out how
to park a working locomotive from Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Corp., the Berkshire-owned railroad, on a track outside the
CenturyLink Center in downtown Omaha, where the meeting is
held.
"She never took a course in this, and she stepped right up," Mr.
Buffett said in an interview.
This year's meeting is a grander-than-usual show. Berkshire
expects more than 40,000 people, which would be a record for an
event that is Omaha's second-biggest draw after the College World
Series, as it celebrates 50 years under Mr. Buffett's control.
Attendees will begin showing up this Thursday before the May 2
meeting to eat at Mr. Buffett's favorite steakhouses and network
with other shareholders. Saturday kicks off with a miniparade led
by two Texas Longhorn steers, Jake and Norman, followed by a Wells
Fargo stagecoach driven by four horses. Berkshire is a major Wells
Fargo & Co. shareholder. Watson, the supercomputer owned by
International Business Machines Corp., another company in which
Berkshire owns a big stake, will be in the CenturyLink Center.
As usual, Ms. Sova will be in the thick of it, roaming the
grounds with walkie-talkie in hand. Her main job on the day of the
meeting is to make sure the roughly 40 Berkshire-owned or
affiliated companies, spread over an exhibition hall bigger than
three football fields, have what they need. "Every year people
can't get a hold of me because my cellphone battery dies," Ms. Sova
said.
Ms. Sova, 30 years old and a graduate of Creighton University in
Omaha, first came to work for Berkshire six years ago after her
sister, Mr. Buffett's previous second assistant, left and
recommended her sibling as a replacement. Ms. Sova and Debbie
Bosanek, Mr. Buffett's first assistant, share duties, but putting
the meeting together takes up much of Ms. Sova's time for at least
nine months of the year.
Despite Mr. Buffett heaping praise on her in his annual letters,
Ms. Sova dislikes attention and insists she only executes "Warren's
orders."
Ms. Sova and her Berkshire colleagues start kicking around ideas
for the meeting's theme months in advance. With only 25 employees,
Berkshire runs a lean operation at its Omaha headquarters, and many
of them, including Chief Financial Officer Marc Hamburg, pitch in
for the meeting.
Once a theme is chosen--this year's is "50 years of a profitable
partnership"--Ms. Sova and an external design firm hired by
Berkshire turn their focus to allotting space to each exhibitor on
the hall floor. Space is based on the popularity of a company's
products, its display plans and whether it is a fully or partly
owned business. See's Candies usually has the largest booth, while
Kirby this year has about 50 square feet for its vacuum cleaners.
Coca-Cola Co., 9%-owned by Berkshire, had to settle for a
60-foot-by-20-foot display area after requesting more space for
this year's meeting.
"It's always a fight for space," said D'Ann Lonowski of Mint
Design Group. "But if you say, 'that's all you get,' they don't
fight or push much further."
One of Ms. Sova's first tasks after taking the meeting
organizer's job was figuring out just how the newspaper toss would
work. The game now involves throwing a specially printed copy of
the Omaha World-Herald--folded, no rubber band--from a distance of
35 feet to get it to land, pages intact, on a home porch provided
by Berkshire-owned Clayton Homes Inc., a maker of manufactured
housing. The winner gets a Dilly Bar from Dairy Queen, another
Berkshire company. Mr. Buffett is undefeated.
Although he doesn't focus on details, Mr. Buffett has final
approval on every aspect of the meeting. "The big picture--any of
the really good concepts that make the meeting what it is...stemmed
from Warren, and the little details of making all of it come
together were worked out by our staff," Ms. Sova said.
There is plenty of last-minute scrambling. Last year, See's
lugged a 7,000-pound fake lollipop onto the display floor. However,
when employees unwrapped the 10-foot lollipop stick that had
shipped separately, they discovered it was badly scuffed. "I
remember running around wondering, 'where are we going to find
white paint' " to cover up the marks, said Courtney Cohen, who
handles the See's Candies exhibit. Fellow organizers eventually
supplied a bucket of white paint and brushes.
It wasn't always such a production. The earliest meetings
attracted no more than a dozen shareholders who piled into the
cafeteria of an insurer owned by Berkshire. By the mid-1980s, as
Mr. Buffett's acclaim spread and Berkshire's stock price soared,
the number of attendees swelled to the hundreds. Many were lured by
shopping discounts at Nebraska Furniture Mart, an Omaha retailer
Berkshire had bought in 1983. In his letters, Mr. Buffett began
enticing shareholders to the meeting with promises of discounts on
Berkshire goods and services.
Shopping has become a central attraction, and many businesses
offer products made for the occasion, notching record sales that
day, so much so that Berkshire is opening the exhibition hall a day
early so shareholders can buy even more stuff. This year, shoppers
can choose from special gold-printed "Berkie" boxers with
caricatures of Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, running shoes with Mr.
Buffett's face on the back and a toddler T-shirt that says, "The
next Warren Buffett."
Write to Anupreeta Das at anupreeta.das@wsj.com
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