巴菲特致股东的信（2005年）⑤金融与金融产品

Finance and Financial Products

金融与金融产品

The star of our finance sector is Clayton Homes, masterfully run by Kevin Clayton. He does not owe his brilliant record to a rising tide: The manufactured-housing business has been disappointing since Berkshire purchased Clayton in 2003. Industry sales have stagnated at 40-year lows, and the recent uptick from Katrina-related demand will almost certainly be short-lived. In recent years, many industry participants have suffered losses, and only Clayton has earned significant money.

我们金融业务的明星是由管理技巧炉火纯青的 Kevin Clayton 先生经营的克莱顿房屋公司 Clayton Homes，他卓越的经营业绩记录并非只是由于行业景气而水涨船高，自 2003 年伯克希尔收购 Clayton Homes 以来，预制房屋业务一直很不景气，最近由于卡特里娜飓风破坏带来的市场需求上升，几乎可以肯定是短暂的，近年来该行业许多企业都在亏损，只有 ClaytonHomes 盈利丰厚。

In this brutal environment Clayton has bought a large amount of manufactured-housing loans from major banks that found them unprofitable and difficult to service. Clayton’s operating expertise and Berkshire’s financial resources have made this an excellent business for us and one in which we are preeminent. We presently service $17 billion of loans, compared to $5.4 billon at the time of our purchase. Moreover, Clayton now owns $9.6 billion of its servicing portfolio, a position built up almost entirely since Berkshire entered the picture.

在这种非常残酷的经营环境下，Clayton Homes 从几家大型银行买入了大量预制房屋贷款，这些银行认为这种贷款无利可图而且难以提供服务。ClaytonHomes 的专业能力和伯克希尔的财务实力却使这种业务成为一个非常有利可图的业务，在这项业务中我们是鹤立鸡群。买入贷款时我们只提供了 54 亿美元预制房屋贷款服务，而现在我们提供的预制房屋贷款服务高达 170 亿美元。不仅如此，Clayton Homes 现在持有 96 亿美元的贷款服务资产组合，这些几乎全部是伯克希尔进入后新增的。

To finance this portfolio, Clayton borrows money from Berkshire, which in turn borrows the same amount publicly. For the use of its credit, Berkshire charges Clayton a one percentage-point markup on its borrowing cost. In 2005, the cost to Clayton for this arrangement was $83 million. That amount is included in “Other” income in the table on the facing page, and Clayton’s earnings of $416 million are after deducting this payment.

Clayton Homes 从伯克希尔借款以建立这些资产组合，由于使用了伯克希尔的信用，伯克希尔加收 1%的利差费用以弥补其借款成本。2005 年 Clayton Homes 为此项借款安排所支付的成本为 8300 万美元，这些数据包括在报表中的其他收入中，Clayton Homes 的 4.16 亿美元收益已经扣除该项利息成本。

On the manufacturing side, Clayton has also been active. To its original base of twenty plants, it first added twelve more in 2004 by way of the bankruptcy purchase of Oakwood, which just a few years earlier was one of the largest companies in the business. Then in 2005 Clayton purchased Karsten, a four-plant operation that greatly strengthens Clayton’s position on the West Coast.

在制造业务上，Clayton Homes 表现得相当活跃。在原有的 20 家工厂的基础上，2004 年一次增加了 12 家工厂，这些工厂全部来自于对几年前还是行业老大的 Oakwood 的破产收购。2005 年又收购了拥有 4 家工厂的Karsten，大大加强了公司在西海岸地区的地位。

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Long ago, Mark Twain said: “A man who tries to carry a cat home by its tail will learn a lesson that can be learned in no other way.” If Twain were around now, he might try winding up a derivatives business. After a few days, he would opt for cats.

很早以前，马克.吐温说："一个想揪着猫尾巴把它弄回家的人，将会得到一个他除此之外根本不可能得到的教训"。如果马克.吐温现在还在世，他可能会试图终止一个衍生产品业务。过不了几天，他会觉得还是选择揪猫尾巴更好。

We lost $104 million pre-tax last year in our continuing attempt to exit Gen Re’s derivative operation. Our aggregate losses since we began this endeavor total $404 million.

在 2005 年继续努力退出通用再保险衍生业务的过程中，我们税前损失为 1.04 亿美元，自从我们开始这一工作之后，我们的累计损失高达 4.04 亿美元。

Originally we had 23,218 contracts outstanding. By the start of 2005 we were down to 2,890. You might expect that our losses would have been stemmed by this point, but the blood has kept flowing. Reducing our inventory to 741 contracts last year cost us the $104 million mentioned above.

原来我们有 23218 份未平仓合约，2005 年初下降为 2890 份。你也许会以为我们的损失会到此为止，但事实上，我们仍旧血流不止，2005 年将未平仓合约减至 741 份让我们付出了前面所说的 1.04 亿美元的代价。

Remember that the rationale for establishing this unit in 1990 was Gen Re’s wish to meet the needs of insurance clients. Yet one of the contracts we liquidated in 2005 had a term of 100 years! It’s difficult to imagine what “need” such a contract could fulfill except, perhaps, the need of a compensation-conscious trader to have a long-dated contract on his books. Long contracts, or alternatively those with multiple variables, are the most difficult to mark to market (the standard procedure used in accounting for derivatives) and provide the most opportunity for “imagination” when traders are estimating their value. Small wonder that traders promote them.

请记住，通用再保险在 1990 年设立衍生交易部门是为了满足客户的再保险需求，但我们 2005 年清算的合约中有一个期限竟然是 100 年。很难以想象这样一个合约所满足的是什么需求，除非可能是一个只关心其补偿的交易员在他的交易登记簿中有一个长期合约需要对冲的需求。长期合约或者那些多变量合约，是最难以市值计价的(mark to market，在衍生交易财务会计中应用的标准程序)，这就为交易员们在估值时提供了绝佳的"想象"机会，因此，交易员们拼命向客户推荐这些合约一点也不奇怪。

A business in which huge amounts of compensation flow from assumed numbers is obviously fraught with danger. When two traders execute a transaction that has several, sometimes esoteric, variables and a far-off settlement date, their respective firms must subsequently value these contracts whenever they calculate their earnings. A given contract may be valued at one price by Firm A and at another by Firm B. You can bet that the valuation differences – and I’m personally familiar with several that were huge – tend to be tilted in a direction favoring higher earnings at each firm. It’s a strange world in which two parties can carry out a paper transaction that each can promptly report as profitable.

一个根据假设的数据，计算出拥有巨额收益的业务，很明显将危机四伏。当两个交易者执行一项交易，其中包含深奥难懂的多个变量，而且结算日非常遥远，他们各自代表的公司在计算收益时，必须相应对他们的合约进行估值。对于一份相同的既定合约，A 企业会得出一个估值，而 B 企业则会得出另一个估值。但你可以打赌，他们的估值差异往往是因为，两家公司都向有利于提高自身收益的方向进行估值。我个人的几次经验表明双方估值的差异甚至差之千里，执行同一份书面合约的双方竟然同时报告盈利，这种事情真是匪夷所思。

I dwell on our experience in derivatives each year for two reasons. One is personal and unpleasant. The hard fact is that I have cost you a lot of money by not moving immediately to close down Gen Re’s trading operation. Both Charlie and I knew at the time of the Gen Re purchase that it was a problem and told its management that we wanted to exit the business. It was my responsibility to make sure that happened. Rather than address the situation head on, however, I wasted several years while we attempted to sell the operation. That was a doomed endeavor because no realistic solution could have extricated us from the maze of liabilities that was going to exist for decades. Our obligations were particularly worrisome because their potential to explode could not be measured. Moreover, if severe trouble occurred, we knew it was likely to correlate with problems elsewhere in financial markets.

我之所以每年都细述有关衍生交易的经历，主要基于两个原因：一个是让我感觉相当不快的个人原因。严酷的事实是，由于我没有马上采取行动，结束通用再保险的衍生交易业务，导致股东们损失了大笔金钱。在收购通用再保险时，我和查理·芒格都知道这是一个麻烦的问题，并且告诉这家公司的管理层，我们想尽快从这项业务中脱身。督促执行这一计划本是我的职责所在，但我不但不强调尽快脱身，还浪费了好几年时间试图卖出该业务。这一努力注定必然失败，因为对于我们那些将要持续几十年的债务迷宫来说，根本不存在任何真正的解脱之道。我们为这些合约承担的责任尤其令人不安，因为一旦问题爆发，后果会不堪设想。更有甚之，一旦发生严重的问题，我们知道这可能与金融市场上其他领域引发出的连锁反应有关。

So I failed in my attempt to exit painlessly, and in the meantime more trades were put on the books. Fault me for dithering. (Charlie calls it thumb-sucking.) When a problem exists, whether in personnel or in business operations, the time to act is now.

我想不伤毫发地脱身的努力以失败而告终，与此同时，我们进行了更多的交易。都怪我优柔寡断犯下大错(芒格称之为吮拇指癖)，当一个问题发生时，不管是人事方面还是商业运营方面，行动的最佳时机是马上行动。

The second reason I regularly describe our problems in this area lies in the hope that our experiences may prove instructive for managers, auditors and regulators. In a sense, we are a canary in this business coal mine and should sing a song of warning as we expire. The number and value of derivative contracts outstanding in the world continues to mushroom and is now a multiple of what existed in 1998, the last time that financial chaos erupted.

第二个原因是，之所以一再阐述我们在这一领域遇到的问题，是希望我们的经历，能够对经理人、审计师、监管层有所启发。在某种意义上，我们是一只刚刚从这一商业煤矿坑逃离的百灵鸟，有义务为大家敲响警钟。全球衍生交易合约的数量和价值继续不断攀升，现在已经是上一次金融危机爆发的 1998 年的数倍之多。

Our experience should be particularly sobering because we were a better-than-average candidate to exit gracefully. Gen Re was a relatively minor operator in the derivatives field. It has had the good fortune to unwind its supposedly liquid positions in a benign market, all the while free of financial or other pressures that might have forced it to conduct the liquidation in a less-than-efficient manner. Our accounting in the past was conventional and actually thought to be conservative. Additionally, we know of no bad behavior by anyone involved.

我们的经验尤其应该让大家更加清醒，因为我们的情况要好于平均水平，本来完全可以体面地脱身而去，却由于拖延的缘故，一错再错，一损再损。通用再保险在衍生交易市场中只不过是一个小玩家，它幸运地在一个良性的市场上解除了其预计流动性头寸，从而不用在财务或其他压力之下可能被迫以并不有效的方式进行清算。我们过去的会计政策是十分传统的，实际上，大家都认为我们相当保守。另外，据我们所知公司没有任何人卷入不正当交易行为。

It could be a different story for others in the future. Imagine, if you will, one or more firms (troubles often spread) with positions that are many multiples of ours attempting to liquidate in chaotic markets and under extreme, and well-publicized, pressures. This is a scenario to which much attention should be given now rather than after the fact. The time to have considered – and improved – the reliability of New Orleans’ levees was before Katrina.

对于其他人来说，未来故事的结局可能会完全不同。想象一下，如果一个或者更多拥有数倍于我们的头寸的企业(麻烦总会迅速扩散)，想要在一个混乱的市场中进行平仓，并且面临着巨大的且广为人知的压力，事情会如何。对于这种情形，应该在事前而不是在事后充分加以关注，考虑并改进新奥尔良防洪堤的最佳时机应该是在卡特里娜飓风来临之前。

When we finally wind up Gen Re Securities, my feelings about its departure will be akin to those expressed in a country song, “My wife ran away with my best friend, and I sure miss him a lot.”

当我们最终将通用再保险的证券交易部门关门大吉之后，我对它的感觉就像一首乡村歌曲中所唱的那样："我的老婆跟我最好的朋友跑了，我想念的更多的是我的朋友而不是我的老婆。"

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Below are the results of our various finance and financial products activities:

以下是我们不同业务类型的金融及金融产品的经营情况：