Southland billionaire investor and businessman Charlie Munger, a close confidante of Warren Buffett and vice chairman of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company, died Tuesday at a California hospital at age 99.
No other details were immediately released. A statement issued by Berkshire Hathaway said only that the firm was informed by Munger’s family that he “peacefully died this morning at a California hospital.”
“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” Buffett said in a statement released by the company.
An Omaha, Nebraska, native, Munger studied meteorology at Caltech at the direction of the Army Air Corps. He never finished his degree but the experience led him to adopt Pasadena as his new home.
He went on to attend Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude, then returned to Southern California to practice real estate law, founding the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson.
He also turned his attention to investing, founding the management firm Wheeler, Munger & Co., while also engaging in real estate development.
Munger met Buffett during a lunch in Nebraska in 1959, and the pair became instant friends. Although they lived in different parts of the country, the pair spoke often and shared investment ideas, often sinking their money into the same companies, including Berkshire Hathaway, of which they took control in the mid-1960s.
Through Berkshire, they took control of companies including See’s Candy, Dairy Queen, Geico and Pasadena-based Wesco Financial. The firm also invested heavily in companies including Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo and IBM.
Munger became vice chairman of Berkshire in 1978. He was also the president of Wesco and later became chairman of the Daily Journal Corp.
Munger and Buffett made for a publicly odd pairing. Buffett would often relish the public spotlight, while Munger preferred to remain more of a background player. He was famed for listening intently during Berkshire Hathaway stockholder meetings as Buffett would deliver long-winded responses to questions, then he would say simply, “I have nothing to add,” drawing laughter from the audience.
Munger had three children with his first wife, Nancy Huggins, whom he married in 1945. One of those children, Teddy, died as a child of leukemia. He had four more children with his second wife, Nancy Barry, who died in 2010 at age 86.
He was a prominent benefactor of the Harvard-Westlake School, for which he served on the board of trustees. He also made substantial gifts to Good Samaritan Hospital, Stanford University, the University of Michigan and UC Santa Barbara.
“Today, the world has lost a giant, and our firm has lost one of its founders, a man whose name we proudly bear,” Ron Olson, a partner in Munger, Tolles & Olson, said in a statement. “While Charlie’s vision, philanthropy, and ability to tell it like it is are known to all, he was to us a dear and generous friend. He will be missed, but his values will live on, and that is great comfort at this time.”