GoKawiilWarren Buffett just stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO in December at age 95, ending a legendary run. The people who’ve tried to copy him haven’t fared as well. Sam Bankman-Fried appeared on a Fortune cover in 2022 asking “The Next Warren Buffett?” He’s now serving a prison sentence for fraud. Eddie Lampert was Businessweek’s “Next Buffett” in 2004 before his Sears empire filed for bankruptcy in 2018.
Weizhen Tang, who calls himself a “Chinese Warren Buffett,” was convicted of a $50 million Ponzi scheme. Chamath Palihapitiya, the SPAC king, once said he wanted to be “our generation’s Berkshire” before the SPAC market collapsed.
Some people believe anointing anyone ‘the next Warren Buffett” is a curse. Others believe it’s simply bad mojo to be compared to a legend. “For the next thousand years there will not be another Warren Buffett,” Mohnish Pabrai of Pabrai Investment Funds told The Wall Street Journal.