Saturday, July 5, 2014

"Carol Loomis, Editor for Warren Buffett, Leaves Job After 60 Years"

I had no idea she was 85.
From the New York Times:

 
 Carol Loomis is retiring after a 60-year career at Fortune magazine. She also edits 
Warren Buffett’s writing, like his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.
In January 1954, a bright-eyed 24-year-old from Cole Camp, Mo., walked into Fortune magazine’s offices at Rockefeller Center. Armed with a college journalism degree and work experience writing for a Maytag company magazine, she took an entry-level job assisting Fortune’s male writers. 

The young woman, Carol Loomis, navigated the magazine’s “Mad Men”-like culture, on one occasion slapping a married colleague whom, she delicately recalled, “had an agenda.” She proved herself as a reporter but had to battle gender stereotypes. In 1970, she fought her way into an Economic Club of New York dinner after its director said he did not want “any frivolous little Smith girls looking for a free dinner and the chance to spend an evening with 1,200 men in black tie.” 
After 60 years at Fortune, Ms. Loomis is retiring as one of the country’s most venerated financial journalists, with a collection of work that reads like a history of modern Wall Street.

“She has an analytical mind and she keeps learning,” said Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor and a close friend. “We males never do that. We quit at about 15. We just think we know it all. At 85, she is interested in learning more.”

In the 1960s, she wrote one of the first articles about hedge funds. She reported two cover articles on the risk of derivatives in the mid-1990s, long before those instruments contributed to the near-collapse of the global economy. A 1999 piece, “Lies, Damn Lies and Managed Earnings,” presaged the wave of accounting scandals a few years later. On Monday, Fortune will publish her final article before she retires, a piece about one of the world’s most powerful financiers, Laurence D. Fink of BlackRock. 

Ms. Loomis is perhaps best known as Mr. Buffett’s Boswell. She has been Fortune’s resident expert on Mr. Buffett since meeting him in 1966, and each year edits the annual shareholder letter of Mr. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, an unusual role for a financial journalist. The two speak nearly every business day and are frequent bridge partners, playing mostly over the Internet....MORE
Here's Fortune:
Fortune's Carol Loomis to retire