巴菲特致股东的信（2009年）③我们有所不为

What We Don’t Do

我们有所不为

Long ago, Charlie laid out his strongest ambition: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” That bit of wisdom was inspired by Jacobi, the great Prussian mathematician, who counseled “Invert, always invert” as an aid to solving difficult problems. (I can report as well that this inversion approach works on a less lofty level: Sing a country song in reverse, and you will quickly recover your car, house and wife.)

很久以前，查理制订了自己最远大的雄心："我只想知道我将死在哪里，那么我就绝不会去那个地方"。这些智慧受到了伟大的普鲁士数学家雅各比的启发，他建议"反向一直反向"，以帮助解决难题。(我也可以说，这种反向方法在一个不那么崇高的层面上也会起作用：倒唱一首乡村歌曲，你会很快找回房子、车子和妻子。)

Here are a few examples of how we apply Charlie’s thinking at Berkshire:

以下是我们如何在伯克希尔应用查理的思想的几个例子：

•Charlie and I avoid businesses whose futures we can’t evaluate, no matter how exciting their products may be. In the past, it required no brilliance for people to foresee the fabulous growth that awaited such industries as autos (in 1910), aircraft (in 1930) and television sets (in 1950). But the future then also included competitive dynamics that would decimate almost all of the companies entering those industries. Even the survivors tended to come away bleeding.

1，查理和我避开那些我们不能评估其未来的业务，无论他们的产品有多么令人兴奋。在过去，人们不需要什么智慧就能预见到汽车(1910 年)飞机(1930 年)和电视机(1950 年)等行业的惊人增长。但未来，还包括各方面的动态竞争，几乎所有进军这些行业的公司将被竞争摧毁，即使是幸存者也常常是遍体鳞伤地离开。

Just because Charlie and I can clearly see dramatic growth ahead for an industry does not mean we can judge what its profit margins and returns on capital will be as a host of competitors battle for supremacy. At Berkshire we will stick with businesses whose profit picture for decades to come seems reasonably predictable. Even then, we will make plenty of mistakes.

在众多的竞争对手争夺霸主地位的情况下，即使查理和我能够明确预见某个行业未来会有巨大的增长，那也不代表我们能够判断其利润率和资本回报会是多少。在伯克希尔，我们将坚持从事其未来数十年的利润似乎可以合理预测的行业。即使如此，我们还是会犯下许多错误。

•We will never become dependent on the kindness of strangers. Too-big-to-fail is not a fallback position at Berkshire. Instead, we will always arrange our affairs so that any requirements for cash we may conceivably have will be dwarfed by our own liquidity. Moreover, that liquidity will be constantly refreshed by a gusher of earnings from our many and diverse businesses.

2，我们永远不会依赖陌生人的善举。"大到不能倒"不会是伯克希尔的退路。相反，我们总是安排我们的事务，以使我们自己的流动资金能够满足任何我们可以想象到的现金需求。此外，我们众多且多元化的业务带来的大量收益，将不断注入新的流动性。

When the financial system went into cardiac arrest in September 2008, Berkshire was a supplier of liquidity and capital to the system, not a supplicant. At the very peak of the crisis, we poured $15.5 billion into a business world that could otherwise look only to the federal government for help. Of that, $9 billion went to bolster capital at three highly-regarded and previously-secure American businesses that needed – without delay – our tangible vote of confidence. The remaining $6.5 billion satisfied our commitment to help fund the purchase of Wrigley, a deal that was completed without pause while, elsewhere, panic reigned.

2008 年 9 月，当金融体系陷入瘫痪之时，伯克希尔是该体系流动性和资本的提供者，而不是求助者。在危机顶峰时期，我们向企业界投入了 155 亿美元，否则这些企业可能只能向联邦政府求助。其中，90 亿美元投入了三家倍受尊敬、以前均安全的美国企业以提高它们的资本金，这些企业刻不容缓需要我们投出无形的信任票。其余的 65 亿美元满足了我们为收购绿箭提供资金的承诺，这桩交易在其他交易充满恐慌时顺畅完成。

We pay a steep price to maintain our premier financial strength. The $20 billion-plus of cash-equivalent assets that we customarily hold is earning a pittance at present. But we sleep well.

为保持一流的财务实力，我们付出了极高的代价。我们通常持有 200 多亿美元的类现金资产收益微薄，但是，我们睡得安稳。

•We tend to let our many subsidiaries operate on their own, without our supervising and monitoring them to any degree. That means we are sometimes late in spotting management problems and that both operating and capital decisions are occasionally made with which Charlie and I would have disagreed had we been consulted. Most of our managers, however, use the independence we grant them magnificently, rewarding our confidence by maintaining an owner-oriented attitude that is invaluable and too seldom found in huge organizations. We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly – or not at all – because of a stifling bureaucracy.

3，我们倾向于让我们的子公司自主经营，我们不会实行任何程度的监督和监视。这意味着我们有时会很晚才发现管理的问题，有时他们的运营和资本方面的决策，如果咨询我和查理的意见，我们可能会不同意。然而，我们大多数经理人都很好运用了我们授予的自主权，保持着一种在大型机构鲜见的、以股东为导向的珍贵态度，来回报我们的信任。我们宁愿承受一些糟糕决策造成的可见成本，也不愿承担由于僵化的官僚作风而导致的决策迟缓(或者根本没有决策)带来的大量无形代价。

With our acquisition of BNSF, we now have about 257,000 employees and literally hundreds of different operating units. We hope to have many more of each. But we will never allow Berkshire to become some monolith that is overrun with committees, budget presentations and multiple layers of management. Instead, we plan to operate as a collection of separately-managed medium-sized and large businesses, most of whose decision-making occurs at the operating level. Charlie and I will limit ourselves to allocating capital, controlling enterprise risk, choosing managers and setting their compensation.

收购 BNSF 之后，我们现在拥有 25.7 万名员工和数百家运营单位。我们希望增加这两方的数量，但绝不允许伯克希尔成为一个充满各种委员会、预算报告和多级管理层的庞然大物。相反，我们计划以一批单独管理的中型和大型企业集团的方式运营，这些企业的大多数决策都在运营层做出。查理和我将把自己的角色限于资本配置、控制企业风险、挑选经理人和制定他们的薪酬。

•We make no attempt to woo Wall Street. Investors who buy and sell based upon media or analyst commentary are not for us. Instead we want partners who join us at Berkshire because they wish to make a long-term investment in a business they themselves understand and because it’s one that follows policies with which they concur. If Charlie and I were to go into a small venture with a few partners, we would seek individuals in sync with us, knowing that common goals and a shared destiny make for a happy business “marriage” between owners and managers. Scaling up to giant size doesn’t change that truth.

4，我们没有试图去讨好华尔街。基于媒体或分析师评论进行交易的投资者不是我们的目标，相反，我们希望加入伯克希尔的合作伙伴是因为，他们希望对自身理解的企业进行长期投资、并认同这个企业所遵循的原则。假如查理和我要与一些合作伙伴加入一家小企业，我们会寻找与我们志同道合的人，因为我们知道共同的目标和命运会让股东和经理人之间建立一个幸福的"商业婚姻"。就算扩展到大规模的投资也不会改变这一事实。

To build a compatible shareholder population, we try to communicate with our owners directly and informatively. Our goal is to tell you what we would like to know if our positions were reversed. Additionally, we try to post our quarterly and annual financial information on the Internet early on weekends, thereby giving you and other investors plenty of time during a non-trading period to digest just what has happened at our multi-faceted enterprise. (Occasionally, SEC deadlines force a non-Friday disclosure.) These matters simply can’t be adequately summarized in a few paragraphs, nor do they lend themselves to the kind of catchy headline that journalists sometimes seek.

为了建立一个和谐的股东群体，我们努力与股东进行直接和有效的沟通。我们的目标是告诉你，如果我们的角色互换我们想要知道什么。此外，我们会在周末一早把季度和年度财务信息公布在网上，从而在非交易时段给予你和其他投资者充足的时间，来消化我们多元化企业发生的事情。(有时 SEC 最后期限会强制在非周五披露。)短短数段不能充分概况这些问题，也不足成为新闻记者寻求的那种夺人眼球的新闻标题。

Last year we saw, in one instance, how sound-bite reporting can go wrong. Among the 12,830 words in the annual letter was this sentence: “We are certain, for example, that the economy will be in shambles throughout 2009 – and probably well beyond – but that conclusion does not tell us whether the market will rise or fall.” Many news organizations reported – indeed, blared – the first part of the sentence while making no mention whatsoever of its ending. I regard this as terrible journalism: Misinformed readers or viewers may well have thought that Charlie and I were forecasting bad things for the stock market, though we had not only in that sentence, but also elsewhere, made it clear we weren’t predicting the market at all. Any investors who were misled by the sensationalists paid a big price: The Dow closed the day of the letter at 7,063 and finished the year at 10,428.

在去年我们一个例子中看到原文摘要是如何出问题的。在长约 12830 个字的年度信中有这么一句话："例如，我们确信整个 2009 年甚至更久以后，经济环境仍将艰难，但是这一结论并不能告诉我们市场是涨是跌"。许多新闻机构报道了(实际上是大肆宣扬)这句话的前半部分，而对后半部分只字不提。我认为这是可怕的新闻报道，受到误导的读者或观众很可能会认为查理和我在预测股市会出现糟糕状况，虽然我们不仅在这句话中还在其它地方清楚的表示，我们根本不是在预测股市。任何被这些耸人听闻的新闻所误导的投资者都付出了巨大代价，道琼斯指数在这封信公布之日以 7063 点收盘，而在年末收于 10428 点。

Given a few experiences we’ve had like that, you can understand why I prefer that our communications with you remain as direct and unabridged as possible.

考虑到我们有过类似的经历，你会明白为什么我更希望我们与你之间的沟通尽可能地直接和完整。

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Let’s move to the specifics of Berkshire’s operations. We have four major operating sectors, each differing from the others in balance sheet and income account characteristics. Therefore, lumping them together, as is standard in financial statements, impedes analysis. So we’ll present them as four separate businesses, which is how Charlie and I view them.

让我们谈谈伯克希尔公司运营的细节。我们有四大业务部分，每一部门的资产负债表和营收帐目都各具特色。如果按照财务报告标准做法把它们混杂在一起会妨碍分析。因此，我们会把它们分为四个独立业务进行展示，这也是查理和我看待它们的方式。