As the annual meeting for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on May 4 in Omaha approaches, National Legal and Policy Center Chairman Peter Flaherty plans a return to the same stage where last year, while presenting NLPC’s shareholder proposal, Warren Buffett cut off his speech and Flaherty was arrested. Trumped-up charges against Flaherty were later dropped.
NLPC has another proposal on Berkshire’s 2024 proxy statement and Flaherty is scheduled to speak on the measure for his allotted five minutes. The nonprofit corporate watchdog released a short video that briefly recounts last year’s incident and points out Mr. Buffett’s contradictory positions on how he manages shareholder meetings.
The video highlights a past statement Mr. Buffett made to CNBC. Responding to an interviewer’s question about Berkshire allowing investors who attend the popular annual meeting to ask any question they want, Mr. Buffett responded, ‘We’ve got a partnership feeling toward the people who have given us their money, and we don’t screen ’em, and they can ask whatever’s on their mind.’
However, last year Mr. Buffett made an exception to that principle when Peter Flaherty – during his official remarks presenting NLPC’s shareholder proposal, which was on the meeting agenda – brought up Mr. Buffett’s relationship with billionaire Bill Gates, their shared philanthropic efforts, and Mr. Gates’s troubling relationship with deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. At that point, Flaherty’s microphone was silenced, and security and Omaha law enforcement forcibly walked him out of the arena and to a local police precinct, where he was arrested, booked, fingerprinted and held for about three hours.
This year’s shareholder proposal addresses concerns about Berkshire’s risk vulnerabilities over the amount its sales and supply chain depend on China. Subsidiaries such as Duracell and Fruit of the Loom, and significant investments such as Apple and Coca-Cola, substantially depend on access to the communist nation. NLPC also filed a proxy memo with the SEC in support of this year’s proposal.
The video released by NLPC concludes by wondering if Mr. Buffett will keep his word, and let all Berkshire investors say ‘whatever is on their mind.’
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