trunks of the SUVs. Then Buffett and the rest
The other passengers shook hands with the pilots, said goodbye to the stewardess and got into their cars. They passed the Sun Valley Aviation, a miniature building on the southern edge of the airport, and onto a road heading towards the mountains. From the moment when the landing gear of the aircraft touched the ground, no more than two minutes passed.
Eight minutes later, strictly on schedule, the next plane landed at the airfield, immediately heading to its parking lot.
In the rays of the golden afternoon sun, one plane after another landed on the airfield in Idaho. Some were flying from the south or east, others were landing from the west, from behind the mountains. Soon on the airfield one could see Cessna Citation "workhorses", and luxurious Learjets, and high-speed Hawkers, and fantastic Falcons, but more often - impressive G-IVs. As the sun began to set, there were already a dozen huge shiny liners lined up here. Somehow it all looked like a toy store window, only for billionaires.
The final destination of the Buffetts' journey was the small town of Ketchum, a few kilometers from Southoos National Park. After a while, the cars drove around the mountain of Dollar Mountain, and before the passengers appeared a green oasis, resting among the brown granite slopes. Here, surrounded by pines and aspens, lies the famous Sun Valley, the most famous resort in the West. Here Ernest Hemingway began writing his famous novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Many skiers and skaters on the US Olympic team considered Sun Valley to be their second home.
The group of families that the Buffetts planned to join this Tuesday was somehow connected to Allen & Co, a boutique investment bank specializing in the media and communications industries. Allen & Co, a major merger in Hollywood, has been hosting a series of discussions and workshops combined with great outdoor recreation for ten years. air in Sun Valley. Herbert Allen, the head of the company, invited to the valley only people he liked or those with whom he expected to do business.
Therefore, at conferences, you could often see both the rich and celebrities such as Candice Bergen, Tom Hanks, Ron Howard and Sydney Pollack; entertainment giants Barry Dealer, Rupert Murdoch, Robert Eager and Michael Eisner; respected journalists Tom Brokaw, Diane Sawyer and Charlie Rose; titans of the world of technology - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Andy Grove3. Not surprisingly, every time Sun Valley was besieged by a whole army of reporters.
The poor journalists had to go a long way for this. On the eve of the conference, they flew into Newark, transferred to a commercial flight to Salt Lake City. There they sat in Terminal E, surrounded by people on their way to godforsaken places like Casper or Sioux City, waiting to squeeze into a small charter plane. After landing in Ketchum, their plane was driven to the farthest end of the airfield, and journalists could only watch from a distance as the robust young employees of Allen & Co, dressed in pastel polo shirts, greeted the numerous company guests arriving on commercial flights. It was easy to recognize the guests in the crowd of passengers. The men are wearing Western boots, Paul Stuart shirts and jeans, the women are dressed in suede jackets, all wearing large turquoise beads. Allen employees identified newcomers from pre-examined photographs. Those they had met before were greeted like old friends. In a matter of seconds, they would pick up guests' luggage and escort them to the SUVs in the parking lot a few steps from the airport.
And reporters trudged to the car rental counter and made their way to Sun Valley, painfully experiencing their “low status”. Over the next few days, many places in Sun Valley will be marked with a “Private Event” sign, hidden from prying eyes by the efforts of various security forces behind huge plants in tubs and flowers in flowerpots hanging on the walls. Reporters will not have any opportunity to learn about a lot of interesting things "behind the curtain", they will only have to follow what is happening from a distance, pricking up their ears1. Ever since 1995 Disney's Michael Eisner and Capital Cities/ABC's Tom Murphy dreamed of merging their companies during the Sun Valley League (that's what the media usually refers to, and rightly so, since the entire resort is involved) and it gets a lot of coverage in the press - sometimes it may even seem that we are talking about the Cannes Film Festival, only in the field of business. However, merger deals that come to light after the conferences are often just the tip of the iceberg. What is happening here is not limited to the conclusion of transactions, although it is the latter that attract the most attention from the press. Every year, rumors circulate in the business community that one company or another is working on a major deal at a "conclave" in the mountains of Idaho. So when conspicuous SUVs roll up to the shed in front of the entrance to the local hotel building, reporters peer into the windshields of cars, trying to determine who arrived this time. When it turns out that this figure deserves the attention of the press, they begin to pursue their prey throughout the resort, brandishing cameras and microphones.
Of course, reporters quickly recognized Warren Buffett as he got out of his car. "Buffett is built into the DNA of the Sun Valley League," his friend Don Q, chairman of Allen & Co2, once said. Buffett is sympathetic to most members of the press, as he never does anything to displease them. And Warren is a big mystery. His public image of a “simple guy” seems quite sincere to many. However, in reality, Buffett is a much more complex person than it might seem. He owned five houses, but he lived in only two of them. At some point it turned out that he was
married to two women. He speaks softly and with a kind twinkle in his eyes, loves aphorisms, boasts that he has many devoted friends, but at the same time has a reputation for being tough and cold businessman. He seems to avoid publicity himself, yet he manages to draw more attention to himself than any other businessman on the planet*. He flies around the country in his G-IV, often attends public events, and among his friends are many celebrities. And at the same time, he claims that he prefers Omaha, hamburgers and thrift. He often talks about that his success is based on a few simple investment ideas and hard work every day. But if everything is limited only to this, then why did no one succeed in repeating his path?
And this time, Buffett, as usual, waved kindly to reporters, giving them a paternal smile. They took some pictures and waited for the next car.
The Buffetts drove up to their house, built in the style of a French chalet. He stood in a row of several similar houses near the pool and tennis courts - in which Herbert Allen usually settled the most important guests. Inside, the Buffetts were already waiting for the usual assortment of gifts - jackets with the Allen & Co logo, baseball caps, fleece sweaters with zippers and polo shirts (every year the colors of the clothes changed), as well as a zippered notebook. Despite his net worth of over $30 billion—they could buy thousands of G-IVs like those now parked at the local airport—Buffett preferred a free polo shirt given by a friend to many other gifts. For some time, Warren carefully studied the gifts prepared for this conference.
But Buffett was most interested in Herbert Allen's personal note and an informational booklet about Sun Valley's program for this year. Buffett's schedule for every hour and every day, proposed in the booklet, was verified literally to the second, filled to the limit and brought to perfection, like Herbert Allen's starched cuffs. The booklet listed the speakers, topics for discussion (this information was kept secret until the very last moment), and lunches and dinners at which Buffett was expected to attend. Unlike other guests, Warren knew about the program in advance, but he was still interested to see what was written in the booklet.
Herbert Allen, "the gentleman from Sun Valley" and the main unspoken "choreographer" of the conference, usually set the tone for the event in understated but noticeable luxury. Those around him appreciated him for his high moral principles, brilliant mind, good advice and generosity. One of the guests once even said: "Having earned the respect of a man like Herbert Allen, you can die in peace." Many of those who dared to criticize Allen were secretly afraid that they would not be invited to the next conference, so they limited themselves to vague allusions to his "unusual", constant concern, impatience and excessive attention to his own person. Allen's interlocutors had to pretty tense up to catch the stream of words that he spewed out at the speed of a machine-gun burst. Herbert quickly asked questions, and then, without listening to the answer, interrupted his interlocutor in mid-sentence, as if he was taking up precious time from him. He could 4 Of course, with the exception of Donald Trump.
without difficulty to pronounce any discouraging phrases. “Of course, the Wall Street bank will be liquidated,” he once told a reporter, although he himself headed the bank. He often referred to his competitors as "hot dog vendors."
Allen deliberately did not expand his company Allen & Co, and the bankers often