Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Titans of business, Warren Buffett and George Soros, avoid each other at HBO party (BRK.b)

From the New York Post:
George Soros and Warren Buffett kept their distance at an HBO bash at the Four Seasons.
Daniel Acker, Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg
George Soros and Warren Buffett kept their distance at an HBO bash at the Four Seasons.

HBO's "Too Big to Fail" film premiere was not big enough to keep Warren Buffett and George Soros in the same room.
Sources who attended the cable network's bash at the Four Seasons say the Wall Street rock stars, whose investment strategies couldn't be more different, stayed well apart during the evening.

A source tells us Soros held court at a table in the center of the Four Seasons' Grill Room, where titans of finance lunch on weekdays.

Buffett, however, presided over a table of female financial journalists in the Pool Room, which is at the other end of a long passageway.

With the two titans of finance in opposite strongholds, one reveler says, "It was like having a scale of wealth" teetering back and forth. The soiree feted HBO's adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin's book about the 2008 Wall Street crash and subsequent bailout.

Neither investor seemed interested in upsetting the balance by mingling. In fact, another party guest says that when Buffett arrived at the party via the Grill Room, with financial writer Devon Spurgeon, a photographer approached to suggest the Berkshire Hathaway billionaire take a shot with Soros, who was also with "a much younger blond."

"Buffett looked a little uncomfortable with the request," the source says. "He said he was on his way into the other room and then hurried away," with blond in tow....MORE