Charlie Munger Handed His Family Fortune Over to The Chinese Warren Buffett Who Flipped It Into $400 Million — 'We Made Unholy Good Returns'

Conviction is casual to speech about. It's harder to wire.

Then-Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger didn't conscionable praise endowment — helium backed it with tens of millions of dollars from his ain household fortune.

The recipient? Li Lu, the capitalist Munger aboriginal referred to successful a 2023 Financial Times illustration arsenic the "Chinese Warren Buffett."

Munger, who passed distant successful 2023 astatine property 99, met Li astatine a Thanksgiving meal successful 2003. What struck him wasn't Li's melodramatic backstory — fleeing China aft the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, earning degrees astatine Columbia, launching his ain firm. It was thing simpler.

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"I'm not funny successful revolution. I'm a capitalist," Munger told FT. "It was his capitalist aptitude that attracted me."

That aptitude would soon beryllium tested.

When Li launched a caller money nether Himalaya Capital successful 2004, Munger entrusted him with $88 cardinal to manage, urging him to instrumentality to semipermanent worth investing alternatively than short-term trading.

The outcome? By 2023, that concern had grown astir four- to fivefold.

"We made unholy bully returns for a long, agelong time," Munger said successful the aforesaid FT  profile. "That $88 cardinal has go 4 oregon 5 times that."

At the 2018 Daily Journal yearly meeting, wherever helium served arsenic chairman, Munger was blunt astir however uncommon this benignant of spot was for him. "In my life, I've fixed wealth to 1 extracurricular manager, and that's Li Lu," helium said. "No others successful my full life. And I person nary feelings that it would beryllium casual to find a second."

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That's not hype. That's Munger drafting a precise hard line.

At that aforesaid meeting, helium explained wherefore Li stood out. "The archetypal regularisation successful sportfishing has ever been food wherever the food are… and Li Lu conscionable went wherever the sportfishing was good." In different words, portion astir investors were crowding into heavy analyzed U.S. markets, Li focused connected China, wherever opportunities were bigger and contention was thinner.

That doctrine showed up intelligibly successful 2 defining investments.

One was an aboriginal stake connected Kweichow Moutai, purchased erstwhile the banal traded astatine conscionable 4 to 5 times earnings. Munger joked that Li "backed up the truck" and bought aggressively — a determination that turned into 1 of the astir celebrated user investments successful Asia.