Buffett, Jobs, Stern, Woods: Who's Your Dream Lunch?
NEW YORK (
) -- Every year,
auctions off a lunch date in his favorite New York City steakhouse to raise money for charity. The meet-and-greet-and-munch with Buffett is a very minor, albeit public, piece of the
Berkshire Hathaway
(BRK.B) - Get Report
chief's significant charitable giving philosophy.
Buffett was actually caught on video this week by
Forbes
at the charitable lunching spot, as part of a larger discussion of Buffett's philanthropic legacy on the same week that
Forbes
released its much perused annual list of global billionaires.
Buffett finished number two in the ranking of global billionaires in 2009 -- though it was noted by
Forbes
that Buffett would have finished ahead of this year No. 1 billionaire, Mexican telecom mogul
, if Buffett would only cease giving so much money to charity.
The amount that charitable investors have been willing to pay for a lunch with Buffett has been considerable. In 2009, the winning bid in the lunch-with-Buffett charity sweepstakes was near $1.7 million. In 2008, the winning bidder donated $2.1 million for the pleasure of Warren Buffett's company over filets. In 2007, the winning bid from two hedge fund managers had been $615,000.
So at least one thing is clear: even amid tough market conditions, Buffett still knows how to grow assets in more ways than one.
TheStreet
audience exhibits some pretty strong preferences about the companies and personalities in which it is most interested.
Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway always earn high marks, bordering on the faithful flock following the good shepherd of the markets. Berkshire Hathaway noted in its most recent 2009 executive compensation filing that
Berkshire Hathaway spending on personal and home security services for Buffett increased in 2009. Still, it is hard to find anyone with anything negative to say -- at least publicly -- about the Oracle of Omaha.
Yet it's not just $123,000 shares like Berkshire Hathaway's vaunted A shares that attention from our readership.
Under a constant threat of extinction, hovering-around-$1 stock of
Sirius XM Radio
(SIRI) - Get Report
is a favorite of
TheStreet
readers, and they typically have much to say about Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin and its marquee human property Howard Stern.
The share price of a stock is clearly not the game-changer in a
Street
popularity contest. To be exact, the difference between shares of Berkshire Hathaway and Sirius XM Radio shares at the close on Friday was $122,199.09.
Some market stories attract a devoted audience for other obvious reasons, such as
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
and its legendary "revolution" leader Steve Jobs.
Apple stock hit a new market cap high this past week, and its market cap actually surpassed the market cap of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Apple and its legion of tech geeks surely do not evoke the humble profile of Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, but the level of devotion to both companies is fairly equal.
The typical Apple-admiring reader of
TheStreet
would probably let a blindfolded Jobs shoot an iPod off their head. And with the release of the iPad now a reality, one can expect the cult-like queues to extend around cities.
In any event, Buffett is buddy-buddy with
Microsoft's
(MSFT) - Get Report
, which necessitates some distance between the Apple and Berkshire Hathaway fan clubs.
One thing that Apple, Berkshire Hathaway and Sirius XM Radio all have in common is that they are not among the plethora of endorsement deals -- past, present and teetering -- for Tiger Woods. Yet, if there is one non-strictly financial subject that attracts a level of attention probably detrimental to the market-focus of readers of
TheStreet
, it is tainted titan of the greens, Tiger Woods.
The Tiger Beat is not just a
Street
phenomenon, but a markets one. One need only look at still photographs of New York Stock Exchange traders during Tiger's recent press conference to measure the extent to which the markets stop moving for Tiger. Those images -- traders standing, as still as statues, necks craned upward at images of Tiger on the overhead screens -- conjure the notion of a
Twilight Zone
episode in which a socialist genius mad-scientist from the future has found a way to freeze the New York Stock Exchange in time.
Since this is the week of
Forbes
annual billionaire list -- itself another reminder of the extreme wealth gap that is part and parcel of capitalism -- we appeal to
TheStreet
readership to ask:
If you could donate $1 million to share a steak lunch with Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Howard Stern and Mel Karmazin, or Tiger Woods, to whose table would your big heart and bigger checkbook lead you?
Vote your conscience, and leave comments about your dream charity lunch below -- as well as which charities you would like to donate your hypothetical million bucks to.
Editor's Note: Eligible charities do not include banks in the federal government's TARP program.
-- Reported by Eric Rosenbaum in New York.
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>>Buffett's Big Payday: Not So Big
>>Howard Stern Howls Defense of Sirius XM
>>Is Buffett, not Carlos Slim, the Richest Man?
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