As a general rule, holding company Berkshire Hathaway does not buy companies run by bad managers. That’s a little bit unusual, as then Fortune editor-at-large Pattie Sellers pointed out to company CEO Warren Buffett and his business partner Charlie Munger, who died at age 99 this week, in a 2014 interview. “A lot of people like to buy good companies with bad managers and then replace them,” she said.
Not the approach at Berkshire Hathaway, the two responded. “We tried that, with predictable results,” Buffett said, adding that “life is so much more fun” when you work with good people instead of trying to reform bad ones. “I mean, who wants to spend their life trying to change people from their natural approaches?”
