When Warren Met Jorge Paulo: Buffett and Lemann Recall Their First Deal -
By VINOD SREEHARSHAAPRIL 10, 2017
The billionaire investors Warren Buffett and Jorge Paulo Lemann have teamed up to engineer some of the biggest
and boldest mergers and acquisitions in recent years, but they have rarely appeared in public together.
Mr. Buffett said that as they were leaving there, “Jorge Paulo brought up Heinz and I said, ‘It sounds good to me.’”
“And a little later, he sent one page of financial terms
and one page of governance terms, and just as would have been the case if I was doing something with my partner Charlie Munger, basically I did not have to change a word,” Mr. Buffett said.
“I consider it one of the largest mistakes in my life
that we didn’t really team up as partners until considerably later,” Mr. Buffett acknowledged Saturday night, but that since doing deals together, “he and I are on the same wavelength.”
Before the Heinz deal in 2013, the two were in Colorado together at a retreat.
“I’m all in favor of free trade and globalization,” said Mr. Lemann, who was one of the founders of the Brazilian
investment firm 3G Capital, which owns such well-known brands as Burger King, Anheuser-Busch and Heinz.
