Hello Berkshire Weekenders,

I recently read a blog post on Gurufocus.com written by Bill Freehling called “Should Warren Buffett Webcast Berkshire Hathaway Meeting.” His blog post weighs both sides of a pretty popular debate.

One side would like Warren Buffett and the Berkshire crew to webcast the entire Berkshire Meeting on Saturday May 1st. Some proponents of the webcast believe that the webcast should be required by the SEC’s fair disclosure regulations. Others would just like more access to the famous Buffett investing wisdom. They would like access to Buffett and Munger’s ideas without the filter of a news agency.

On the other side, many shareholders believe that this should be a shareholders-only event. One big reason is tradition. This very famous, once-a-year meeting has been closed-door to all video and photography since before Buffett’s chairmanship. Buffett probably also enjoys keeping the event semi-private, as the event brings a lot of shopping to his hometown of Omaha, NE every year for the shareholder’s meeting. If the meeting were to be webcast, it might diminish travel to Omaha every May for the Berkshire Shareholder’s Weekend. Every year, 30,000+ visitors come to Omaha for the Berkshire Shareholder’s Meeting and the economic benefit to the city is quite large.

Currently, it takes a shareholder’s credential to get into the meeting and to listen to Warren Buffett’s and Charlie Munger’s advice first hand. Everyone else has to wait for the media to recap what was said later in the day.

So what do you think? Would you like to see a live webcast of the Berkshire Meeting? Do you think it should stay private?

Best Wishes,
Bill, the blogger