Who Was Charlie Munger? The Man Who Helped Warren Buffett Build Berkshire, Dies at 99

Warren Buffett's trusted confidante Charles Munger died on Tuesday night in California. He was 99. The Berkshire Hathaway Inc. vice chairman was a longtime resident of Los Angeles.

“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” Buffett said on the passing of his long-time business partner. 

Charles Thomas Munger was born on January 1, 1924, in Omaha. He was the first of three children of Alfred Munger and the former Florence Russell, who was known as Toody. His father, the son of a federal judge, had earned a law degree at Harvard University before returning to Omaha, where his clients included the Omaha World-Herald newspaper.

According to Bloomberg, Munger’s initial brush with the Buffett family came through his work on Saturdays at Buffett & Son, the Omaha grocery store run by Ernest Buffett, Warren’s grandfather.

Charlie Munger entered the University of Michigan at the age of 17 with plans to study math. In 1942, during his second year at the university, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, soon to become the Air Force.

He was sent to the California Institute of Technology to learn meteorology before being posted to Nome, Alaska. It was during this period, in 1945, that he married his first wife, Nancy Huggins.

Munger applied to Harvard Law School before his Army discharge in 1946. He worked on the Harvard Law Review and in 1948 was one of 12 in the class of 335 to graduate magna cum laude.

Charlie Munger moved to California after graduating from Harvard in 1948 to join a Los Angeles law firm. He was not satisfied with the income potential of his legal career and so he began working on construction projects and real estate deals.

Munger founded a new law office, Munger, Tolles & Hills, and, in 1962, started an investment partnership, Wheeler, Munger & Co.

Munger met Buffett at a dinner party in 1959. Their investments in Berkshire Hathaway began in 1962 when the company made men’s suit linings at textile mills in Massachusetts, Bloomberg reported.

In 1975, Munger closed the hedge fund and joined Berkshire Hathaway as vice-chairman in 1978.

He one of the biggest shareholders of Berkshire with stock valued at about $2.2 billion. His overall net worth was about $2.6 billion, according to Forbes.

Munger's impact extended beyond the business realm. A philanthropist at heart, he donated millions to universities and, in 2021, designed a residence hall named ‘Munger Hall’ at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The ambitious project, aimed to accommodate over 4,500 students, but plans were eventually scrapped due to criticism regarding the absence of windows in a majority of the rooms, the New York Times reported.