本文摘自巴菲特致股东的信1983，英文原文在最后。本文主要讨论了巴菲特所遵循的与管理者-所有者关系相关的主要商业原则。管理者和所有者的关系会产生委托代理问题，那么什么是委托代理问题呢？委托代理问题是指在公司治理中，由于所有权和经营权的分离，导致股东（委托人）与经理人（代理人）之间目标不一致的情况。这种情况下，由于信息不对称和不确定性，经理人可能会偏离股东的利益，采取对自己更有利的行动，而股东则难以有效监督和控制经理人的行为。那么如何解决委托代理问题，请看下文：
去年，我们的注册股东从大约 1900 人增加到大约 2900 人。 这一增长的大部分原因是我们与蓝筹邮票公司（Blue Chip Stamps）的合并，但 "自然 "增长的步伐也在加快，使我们的股东人数从几年前的 1000 人增加到现在的 2900 人。
面对如此多的新股东，我们应该总结一下我们所遵循的与管理者-所有者关系相关的主要商业原则：
o 虽然我们的形式是公司，但我们的态度是伙伴关系。 查理-芒格和我把股东视为所有者-合伙人，把自己视为管理合伙人。 (由于我们持股的规模，无论好坏，我们也是控股合伙人）。我们并不把公司本身视为企业资产的最终所有者，而是把公司视为股东拥有资产的渠道。
o 根据这种所有者导向，我们的董事都是伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司的大股东。 在五位董事中，至少有四位董事持有伯克希尔公司的股份，占家族净资产的 50%以上。 我们自食其力。
o 我们的长期经济目标（受稍后提及的一些限制）是最大化每股内在商业价值的年均收益率。 我们不以规模来衡量伯克希尔的经济意义或业绩，而是以每股收益来衡量。 我们确信，每股收益率在未来会降低--资本基础的大幅扩大将确保这一点。 但如果我们的每股收益率不能超过美国大型企业的平均水平，我们将感到失望。
o 我们的首选是通过直接拥有一批能够产生现金并持续获得高于平均水平的资本回报的多元化企业来实现这一目标。 我们的第二种选择是拥有类似企业的一部分，主要通过我们的保险子公司购买有价普通股来实现。企业的价格和可用性以及对保险资本的需求决定了任何一年的资本分配。
o 由于这种双管齐下的企业所有权方式以及传统会计的局限性，合并报告的收益可能对我们真实的经济表现揭示得相对较少。 查理和我，无论是作为所有者还是管理者，几乎都忽略了这些综合数字。不过，我们也会向你们报告我们控制的每个主要企业的盈利情况，我们认为这些数字非常重要。 这些数字，连同我们将提供的有关各个企业的其他信息，应有助于你们对它们做出判断。
o 会计后果不会影响我们的运营或资本分配决策。 当收购成本相近时，我们更倾向于购买根据标准会计原则我们无法报告的 2 美元收益，而不是购买可以报告的 1 美元收益。 这正是我们经常面临的选择，因为整个企业（其盈利可完全报告）的售价往往是小部分企业（其盈利在很大程度上不可报告）按比例计算售价的两倍。 总的来说，随着时间的推移，我们希望未报告的收益能通过资本收益充分反映在我们的企业内在价值中。
o 我们很少举债，即使举债，我们也会尽量采用长期固定利率的方式。 我们会拒绝一些有趣的机会，而不是过度利用我们的资产负债表。 这种保守主义虽然会影响我们的业绩，但考虑到我们对投保人、储户、贷款人和许多股权持有人的信托义务，这是唯一能让我们安心的做法。
o 管理层的 "愿望清单 "不会以牺牲股东利益为代价。 我们不会不顾股东的长期经济后果，以控制价格收购整个企业，从而实现多元化。 我们只会用我们自己的钱来用你们的钱，并充分权衡你们通过直接购买股票市场来分散投资组合所能获得的价值。
o 我们认为崇高的意图应定期与结果进行核对。 我们通过评估随着时间的推移，每保留 1 美元是否能为股东带来至少 1 美元的市场价值，来检验保留收益是否明智。 迄今为止，我们通过了这一检验。 我们将继续在五年滚动的基础上进行测试。 随着我们净资产的增长，合理使用留存收益变得更加困难。
o 只有当我们获得的商业价值与付出的价值相当时，我们才会发行普通股。 这条规则适用于所有形式的发行--不仅包括合并或公开发行股票，还包括股债交换、股票期权和可转换证券。 我们不会在不符合整个企业价值的基础上出售贵公司的一小部分股份--这正是股票发行的意义所在。
o 你应该完全了解查理和我的一个共同态度，它损害了我们的财务业绩：无论价格如何，我们对出售伯克希尔拥有的任何优秀企业都毫无兴趣，只要我们希望它们至少能产生一些现金，只要我们对它们的管理者和劳资关系感觉良好，我们就非常不愿意出售次等企业。 我们希望不要重蹈资本配置的覆辙，导致我们陷入这些次等企业的泥潭。 如果有人说，通过大笔资本支出就能使我们糟糕的业务恢复到令人满意的盈利能力，我们会非常谨慎。 (预测会令人眼花缭乱，倡导者也会诚心诚意，但归根结底，在一个糟糕的行业中追加巨额投资，通常就像在流沙中挣扎一样没有回报）。尽管如此，金罗米牌管理行为（每次都放弃最没有前途的业务）并不是我们的风格。我们宁愿我们的整体业绩受到一点影响，也不愿意参与其中。
o 我们将坦诚地向您汇报，强调在评估企业价值时重要的优点和缺点。 我们的准则是，如果我们的立场相反，我们会告诉您我们想知道的商业事实。 我们对您的承诺不会少。此外，作为一家主营传播业务的公司，如果我们在报道自己时所采用的准确性、平衡性和敏锐性标准低于我们期望我们的新闻人员在报道他人时所采用的标准，那将是不可原谅的。 我们还认为，坦诚对我们作为管理者也有好处：在公开场合误导他人的首席执行官最终可能会在私下里误导自己。
o 尽管我们奉行坦诚政策，但只有在法律要求的范围内，我们才会讨论我们在有价证券方面的活动。 好的投资理念和好的产品或企业收购理念一样，都是稀有的、有价值的，而且会被竞争者抢占。 因此，我们通常不会谈论我们的投资理念。 这一禁令甚至延伸到我们已经卖出的证券（因为我们可能会再次购买）和我们被错误地传言要购买的股票。 如果我们否认这些报道，但在其他场合说 "无可奉告"，那么 "无可奉告 "就成了确认。
这就是我们的教义。
英语原文：
This past year our registered shareholders increased from about 1900 to about 2900. Most of this growth resulted from our merger with Blue Chip Stamps, but there also was an acceleration in the pace of “natural” increase that has raised us from the 1000 level a few years ago.
With so many new shareholders, it’s appropriate to summarize the major business principles we follow that pertain to the manager-owner relationship:
o Although our form is corporate, our attitude is partnership. Charlie Munger and I think of our shareholders as owner-partners, and of ourselves as managing partners. (Because of the size of our shareholdings we also are, for better or worse, controlling partners.) We do not view the company itself as the ultimate owner of our business assets but, instead, view the company as a conduit through which our shareholders own the assets.
o In line with this owner-orientation, our directors are all major shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. In the case of at least four of the five, over 50% of family net worth is represented by holdings of Berkshire. We eat our own cooking.
o Our long-term economic goal (subject to some qualifications mentioned later) is to maximize the average annual rate of gain in intrinsic business value on a per-share basis. We do not measure the economic significance or performance of Berkshire by its size; we measure by per-share progress. We are certain that the rate of per-share progress will diminish in the future - a greatly enlarged capital base will see to that. But we will be disappointed if our rate does not exceed that of the average large American corporation.
o Our preference would be to reach this goal by directly owning a diversified group of businesses that generate cash and consistently earn above-average returns on capital. Our second choice is to own parts of similar businesses, attained primarily through purchases of marketable common stocks by our insurance subsidiaries. The price and availability of businesses and the need for insurance capital determine any given year’s capital allocation.
o Because of this two-pronged approach to business ownership and because of the limitations of conventional accounting, consolidated reported earnings may reveal relatively little about our true economic performance. Charlie and I, both as owners and managers, virtually ignore such consolidated numbers. However, we will also report to you the earnings of each major business we control, numbers we consider of great importance. These figures, along with other information we will supply about the individual businesses, should generally aid you in making judgments about
them.
o Accounting consequences do not influence our operating or capital-allocation decisions. When acquisition costs are similar, we much prefer to purchase $2 of earnings that is not reportable by us under standard accounting principles than to purchase $1 of earnings that is reportable. This is precisely the choice that often faces us since entire businesses (whose earnings will be fully reportable) frequently sell for double the pro-rata price of small portions (whose earnings will be largely
unreportable). In aggregate and over time, we expect the unreported earnings to be fully reflected in our intrinsic business value through capital gains.
o We rarely use much debt and, when we do, we attempt to structure it on a long-term fixed rate basis. We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet. This conservatism has penalized our results but it is the only behavior that leaves us comfortable, considering our fiduciary obligations to policyholders, depositors, lenders and the many equity holders who have committed unusually large portions of their net worth to our care.
o A managerial “wish list” will not be filled at shareholder expense. We will not diversify by purchasing entire businesses at control prices that ignore long-term economic consequences to our shareholders. We will only do with your money what we would do with our own, weighing fully the values you can obtain by diversifying your own portfolios through direct purchases in the stock market.
o We feel noble intentions should be checked periodically against results. We test the wisdom of retaining earnings by assessing whether retention, over time, delivers shareholders at least $1 of market value for each $1 retained. To date, this test has been met. We will continue to apply it on a five-year rolling basis. As our net worth grows, it is more difficult to use retained earnings wisely.
o We will issue common stock only when we receive as much in business value as we give. This rule applies to all forms of issuance - not only mergers or public stock offerings, but stock for-debt swaps, stock options, and convertible securities as well. We will not sell small portions of your company - and that is what the issuance of shares amounts to - on a basis inconsistent with the value of the entire enterprise.
o You should be fully aware of one attitude Charlie and I share that hurts our financial performance: regardless of price, we have no interest at all in selling any good businesses that Berkshire owns, and are very reluctant to sell sub-par businesses as long as we expect them to generate at least some cash and as long as we feel good about their managers and labor relations. We hope not to repeat the capital-allocation mistakes that led us into such sub-par businesses. And we react with great caution to suggestions that our poor businesses can be restored to satisfactory profitability by major capital expenditures. (The projections will be dazzling - the advocates will be sincere - but, in the end, major additional investment in a terrible industry usually is about as rewarding as struggling in quicksand.) Nevertheless, gin rummy managerial behavior (discard your least promising business at each turn) is not our style. We
would rather have our overall results penalized a bit than engage in it.
o We will be candid in our reporting to you, emphasizing the pluses and minuses important in appraising business value. Our guideline is to tell you the business facts that we would want to know if our positions were reversed. We owe you no less. Moreover, as a company with a major communications business, it would be inexcusable for us to apply lesser standards of accuracy, balance and incisiveness when reporting on ourselves
than we would expect our news people to apply when reporting on others. We also believe candor benefits us as managers: the CEO who misleads others in public may eventually mislead himself in private.
o Despite our policy of candor, we will discuss our activities in marketable securities only to the extent legally required. Good investment ideas are rare, valuable and subject to competitive appropriation just as good product or business acquisition ideas are. Therefore, we normally will not talk about our investment ideas. This ban extends even to securities we have sold (because we may purchase them again) and to stocks
we are incorrectly rumored to be buying. If we deny those reports but say “no comment” on other occasions, the no-comments become confirmation.
That completes the catechism.
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