Companies & roles
Munger started as a lawyer, became an investor, and spent the rest of his life as a director and chairman — a man who, once he found a business he trusted, simply did not let go. Here is the whole working life, company by company.
He kept a small number of seats and kept them for decades. The law firm he founded in 1962 still carries his name; he became vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway in 1978 and held the title until he died; he chaired Wesco for twenty-seven years and the Daily Journal for the better part of half a century. The pattern is the man: few commitments, made carefully, then held through everything.
Vice chairman, 1978–2023
Munger was Warren Buffett’s closest partner and the second voice at every Berkshire annual meeting. He became vice chairman in 1978 and never left the role; Buffett credited him as the architect of the modern company — the partner who pushed Berkshire away from buying cheap, mediocre businesses and toward owning great ones.
Founding partner, 1962
The Los Angeles law firm Munger co-founded in 1962. He practiced law only a few more years before leaving active practice for full-time investing, but the firm kept his name and his standards.
Founder, 1962
His own investment partnership, started the same year as the law firm and wound down in the mid-1970s. It was where Munger learned to invest with his own money and built the record that made the rest of the career possible — by Buffett’s reckoning, roughly 19.8% compounded annually from 1962 to 1975, against about 5.0% for the Dow.
Chairman & CEO, 1984–2011
A Pasadena holding company — originally a savings-and-loan thrift — that Munger ran for twenty-seven years and turned into a kind of miniature Berkshire, with its own following and its own meetings. Berkshire bought in the remaining roughly 20% it did not already own in 2011.
Chairman; a director for 46 years
A small Los Angeles legal publisher (later, also a courtroom-software business) that became, improbably, the stage for the best of late Munger. As chairman he sat alone at the annual meeting and took questions for two and a half hours, unscripted, into his late nineties. He stepped down as chairman in March 2022 but stayed on as a director, having served on the board for forty-six years. See the Daily Journal meetings.
Chairman
A trading-stamps company that Munger and Buffett used as an acquisition vehicle in the 1970s — the float it generated bought See’s Candies, the Buffalo News, and Wesco. Blue Chip was merged into Berkshire Hathaway in 1983.
Acquired via Blue Chip, 1972
The turning point. In 1972 Munger pushed Buffett to pay around $25 million for See’s — far more than a Graham-style bargain hunter would have countenanced — on the conviction that a beloved brand with pricing power was worth a premium. It worked, and it changed how both men invested for the rest of their lives: a great business at a fair price beats a fair business at a great price.
Board director since January 1997
The company Munger admired without reservation and refused to sell. He joined the board in January 1997 and stayed on it. As he put it in 2023: “I love everything about Costco. I’m a total addict, and I’m never going to sell a share.”