Buffett's Buy-and-Hold Billionaire Disciple

Stewart Horejsi’s business was in a funk. It was 1980, and Brown Welding Supply, his family’s third-generation distributor of hydrogen and oxygen tanks, was battling competitors intent on expanding into its corner of Kansas. While “it was a profitable business,” says Horejsi, 75, who lives in Paradise Valley, Ariz., “the competition just grew.” Frustrated, he bought 40 shares of Berkshire Hathaway for $265 each with the company’s cash after friends told him about Warren Buffett, the company’s then-little-known chairman. He bought another 60 shares two weeks later at $295 and 200 more at $330 a month after that.

Today, he’s a billionaire. The 4,300 Class A Berkshire shares Horejsi says he acquired over the years are now worth $745 million; combined with other holdings, that gives him a net worth of at least $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In addition to Buffett, the world’s fourth-richest person, at least six current or former billionaires derive their fortunes from the stock. They include Charles Munger, the company’s vice chairman, and David Gottesman, a Berkshire board member and founder of asset-management firm First Manhattan.