Berkshire Hathaway Inc. News Release

Today, Warren E. Buffett converted 1,800 A shares into 2,700,000 B shares in order to give these B shares to four family foundations: 1,500,000 shares to The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and 400,000 shares to each of The Sherwood Foundation, The Howard G. Buffett Foundation and NoVo Foundation. These donations have been delivered today.

Mr. Buffett’s comments to his fellow shareholders follow:

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To My Fellow Shareholders:

I will no longer be writing Berkshire’s annual report or talking endlessly at the annual meeting. As the British would say, I’m “going quiet.”

Sort of.

Greg Abel will become the boss at yearend. He is a great manager, a tireless worker and an honest communicator. Wish him an extended tenure.

I will continue talking to you and my children about Berkshire via my annual Thanksgiving message. Berkshire’s individual shareholders are a very special group who are unusually generous in sharing their gains with others less fortunate. I enjoy the chance to keep in touch with you. Indulge me this year as I first reminisce a bit. After that, I will discuss the plans for distribution of my Berkshire shares. Finally, I will offer a few business and personal observations.

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As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m grateful and surprised by my luck in being alive at 95. When I was young, this outcome did not look like a good bet. Early on, I nearly died.

It was 1938 and Omaha hospitals were then thought of by its citizens as either Catholic or Protestant, a classification that seemed natural at the time.

Our family doctor, Harley Hotz, was a friendly Catholic who made house calls toting a black bag. Dr. Hotz called me Skipper and never charged much for his visits. When I experienced a bad bellyache in 1938, Dr. Hotz came by and, after probing a bit, told me I would be OK in the morning.

He then went home, had dinner and played a little bridge. Dr. Hotz couldn’t, however, get my somewhat peculiar symptoms out of his mind and later that night he dispatched me to St. Catherine’s Hospital for an emergency appendectomy. During the next three weeks, I felt like I was in a nunnery, and began enjoying my new “podium.” I liked to talk – yes, even then – and the nuns embraced me.

To top things off, Miss Madsen, my third-grade teacher, told my 30 classmates to each write me a letter. I probably threw away the letters from the boys but read and reread those from the girls; hospitalization had its rewards.