Today I received an email with Warren Buffet’s Annual Letter for 2009.

I don’t know whether Warren Buffet writes this himself … though I must say the copy oozes personality … and if he didn’t write it … there’s one heck of a copywriter behind this.

Size Can Fool Ya
Given Berkshire Hathaway’s monstrous size you’d expect an annual letter from the top dog to be some dry cookie-cutter verbiage filled with all the usual corporate jargon.

Yet this letter has none of that…

Financial Copywriting at Its Best
The document his lined with numbers, percentages, return rates and all that good stuff that would usually put the average person to sleep … this letter makes you laugh, nod, and believe in the company.

This paragraph gives a clear picture of the company’s values:

With our acquisition of BNSF, we now have about 257,000 employees and literally hundreds of
different operating units. We hope to have many more of each. But we will never allow Berkshire
to become some monolith that is overrun with committees, budget presentations and multiple
layers of management.

And how about this beauty:

We make no attempt to woo Wall Street. Investors who buy and sell based upon media or analyst
commentary are not for us.