Warren Buffett will go to great lengths to stop Berkshire Hathaway using consultants. “If the board hires a compensation consultant after I’m gone, I will come back,” he promised its annual shareholder meeting on Saturday. It was a joke, but from the heart.
Mr Buffett’s low opinion of overpaid hedge fund managers, whom he describes as “compensated on the basis of something that in aggregate cannot be true”, is well known. He extends that scepticism to other intermediaries — investment bankers, brokers, and consultants of every kind.
It makes him highly unusual, since the corporate world is heading in the opposite direction. Everywhere one looks, there are more and more consultants — on strategy, investment, operations, compensation, digital transformation, technology, marketing. Some businesses seem to have been entirely occupied by consultants.