Legendary investor Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger dies aged 99

Mr Munger had been using a wheelchair to get around for several years but he had remained mentally sharp.

Mr Munger preferred to stay in the background and let Mr Buffett be the face of Berkshire, and he often downplayed his contributions to the company’s remarkable success.

But Mr Buffett always credited Mr Munger with pushing him beyond his early value investing strategies to buy great businesses at good prices like See’s Candy.

“Charlie has taught me a lot about valuing businesses and about human nature,” Mr Buffett said in 2008.

Mr Buffett’s early successes were based on what he learned from former Columbia University professor Ben Graham.

He would buy stock in companies that were selling cheaply for less than their assets were worth, and then, when the market price improved, sell the shares.

Omaha originals

During the entire time they worked together, Mr Buffett and Mr Munger lived more than 1500 miles apart, but Mr Buffett said he would call Mr Munger in Los Angeles or Pasadena to consult on every major decision he made.

Mr Munger grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, about five blocks away from Mr Buffett’s current home, but because Mr Munger is seven years older, the two men didn’t meet as children, even though both worked at the grocery store Mr Buffett’s grandfather and uncle ran.

When the two men met in 1959 at an Omaha dinner party, Mr Munger was practicing law in Southern California and Mr Buffett was running an investment partnership in Omaha.

Mr Buffett and Mr Munger hit it off at that initial meeting and then kept in touch through frequent telephone calls and lengthy letters, according to the biography in Mr Munger’s book Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger.

The two men shared investment ideas and occasionally bought into the same companies during the 1960s and 1970s.

‘I have nothing to add’

They became the two biggest shareholders in one of their common investments, trading stamp maker Blue Chip Stamp, and through that acquired See’s Candy, the Buffalo News and Wesco. Mr Munger became Berkshire’s vice chairman in 1978, and chairman and president of Wesco Financial in 1984.

Thousands of Berkshire shareholders will remember the curmudgeonly quips Mr Munger offered while answering questions alongside Mr Buffett at the annual meetings.

Mr Munger was known for repeating “I have nothing to add” after many of Mr Buffett’s expansive answers at the Berkshire meetings.

But Mr Munger also often offered sharp answers that cut straight to the heart of an issue, such as the advice he offered in 2012 on spotting a good investment.

“If it’s got a really high commission on it, don’t bother looking at it,” he said.

Mr Munger was known as a voracious reader and a student of human behaviour. He employed a variety of different models borrowed from disciplines like psychology, physics and mathematics to evaluate potential investments.

Mr Munger studied mathematics at the University of Michigan in the 1940s, but dropped out of college to serve as a meteorologist in the Army Air Corps during World War II.

Then he went on to earn a law degree from Harvard University in 1948 even though he hadn’t finished a bachelor’s degree.

Mr Munger built a fortune worth more than $US2 billion ($3 billion) at one point and earned a spot on the list of the richest Americans, but Mr Munger’s wealth has been decreasing as he engaged in philanthropy.

Mr Munger has given significant gifts to Harvard-Westlake, Stanford University Law School, the University of Michigan and the Huntington Library as well as other charities. He also gave a significant portion of his Berkshire stock to his eight children after his wife died in 2010.

Bloomberg and AP