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Business students to meet billionaire Warren Buffett
A group of Fort Scott Community College students will take the trip of a lifetime this week thanks to FSCC alumnus and former Fort Scott resident Rick Mayhew.
Mayhew, who is also a former employee of The Western Insurance Company, has been corresponding the last several years with the noted investor, businessman and philanthropist Warren Buffett, who once worked for the insurance company that was founded in 1910 in Fort Scott and was sold for about $400 million to Lincoln Financial Corporation in 1984. The first office was located at 116 S. Main St. in downtown Fort Scott.
With an estimated current net worth of about $46 billion, Buffett is ranked by Forbes this year as the second-richest person in the world, behind only Microsoft mogul Bill Gates.
Mayhew, who first began talking to Buffett in the mid-1990s and knew him from their ties to The Western Insurance Companies, plans to finance the trip for a group of 15 FSCC business students, who are expected to leave Thursday for Buffett's hometown of Omaha, Neb., for a rare meeting with the wealthy businessman in his offices at the Berkshire Hathaway insurance company, FSCC officials said.
The students are scheduled to make the trip on Thursday, meet with Buffett on Friday, and return on Saturday. FSCC is now included among a list of prestigious colleges across the nation -- including Harvard, Columbia and Yale -- that in past years have been invited to meet Buffett to learn about his life, his career, and how he became one of the wealthiest people in the world. While Buffett could not come to Fort Scott, he invited the FSCC students to visit him on Dec. 1, Mayhew said.
"To be part of that group is a very nice compliment to Fort Scott and a compliment to everyone who worked at The Western over the years," Mayhew said in a statement.
Buffett typically makes an annual trip to Harvard to address business students there, he said. Students will also get a chance to ask Buffett questions and present investment opportunities to him. Mayhew has been working with the students to help them prepare for the meeting.
Mayhew and his wife, Shelly, who are paying for lodging and transportation for the trip, visited FSCC on Wednesday to discuss planning of the trip and answer questions from the students. Mayhew said he and Shelly have never had a chance to visit with Buffett directly.
"This is an opportunity that you may never get again," Mayhew told the students.
FSCC business instructor Debra Cummings will accompany the Mayhews and the students on the trip. The students were chosen based on essays they wrote and questions they submitted concerning business today. To help prepare students for the trip, Mayhew said he provided each student with a copy of Buffett's life story, "Of Permanent Value". Each student also received an annual report with Buffett's autograph and will have dinner with Buffett's daughter, Susie, on Thursday evening, he said.
College officials are pleased that Mayhew is giving back to one of his alma maters.
"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for these students and one they wouldn't even have at a four-year school," Cummings said. "It is just super that Rick had a connection and could get us in. This is truly a wonderful gift back to FSCC from one of our own former students."
Buffett, who has been called the "Oracle of Omaha" or the "Sage of Omaha," was born in 1930 in Omaha. He amassed his enormous fortune from astute investments, particularly through the Berkshire Hathaway company, of which he is the largest shareholder and CEO, according to his Web site. In June, Buffett committed to giving away his fortune to charity, with 85 percent of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the site said.
This donation is reportedly the largest act of charitable giving in U.S. history. At that time, Buffett also announced that he would give away more than 80 percent -- or about $37 billion of his $44 billion fortune -- to five foundations in annual gifts of stock, beginning in July. The largest contribution went to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Students making the trip are the beneficiaries of the good feelings Buffett has from his encounters with The Western in the 1950s, Mayhew said. Buffett had a good relationship with Ray Duboc, president of The Western at that time.
"He was a first class human being as well as an outstanding businessman," Buffett said of Duboc.
Buffett later invested in the company, which was sold in the 1980s when company chairman Charles Duboc, Ray Duboc's son, and Cedric McCurley, then president, met with Buffett and the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger, to discuss the sale. Early in his career, Buffett began purchasing stock in the Geico insurance company, which he later sold and began purchasing stock in The Western company.
At one point, Buffett had half of his net worth in Western stock, Mayhew said. He later sold his Western stock and began buying Geico stock again and eventually owned the entire company.
Mayhew is also providing the background on The Western for a biography on Buffett being written by former Morgan Stanley analyst Alice Schroeder. Many of the books written about Buffett contain some references to his time at The Western Insurance Companies in Fort Scott. Mayhew attended FSCC from 1971 to 1973 before attending Pittsburg State University and Kansas State University. He began his career with The Western and currently works for The Hartford company, he said.
The Western once employed 785 people in Fort Scott and about 2,200 people nationwide. The company would be worth more than $1 billion today.