Buffett says Berkshire 'will continue to do fine' no matter who wins White House

Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway's chairman and chief executive, said here on Saturday that his company "will continue to do fine" no matter who will win the 2016 US presidential election.

In response to a question about the potential regulatory impact on Berkshire's business if Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, becomes the next U.S. president, Buffett, a supporter of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said "that won't be the main problem.".

"We've operated under price controls, we've had 52 percent federal taxes applied to our earnings...we've had regulations come along," he said at the company's annual shareholder meeting, often known as Woodstock for Capitalists, held at the CenturyLink Center in downtown Omaha of Nebraska.

"In the end, business in this country has done extraordinary well for a couple hundred years. It has adapted to society and society has adapted to business," Buffett said, adding that Berkshire will continue to do fine no matter whether Trump or Clinton will be elected the U.S. president.

"No presidential candidate or president is going to end it," Buffett said, reiterating his confidence that the United States "remains the greatest place to do business."

However, the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of only 0.5 percent in the first quarter of this year, its weakest quarterly pace in two years, according to the Commerce Department.

Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the GDP report showed "there's more work to do and the president will continue to call on Congress to support policies that will boost our long-run growth and living standards."

The annual meeting is being livestreamed to the public on Saturday for the first time in Berkshire's history and it's also translated into Mandarin in real-time, indicating the company's increasing interest in China. Around 40,000 investors all around the world came to Omaha, to attend this year's meeting, about 3,000 of which were from China, according to local media.

In an annual letter to shareholders in February, Buffett said the online broadcast would allow more investors to check on the health of the 85-year-old billionaire and his 92-year-old partner, Charles Munger, and help reduce attendance at the meeting, which strained the event capacity last year.

"If we were partners with you in a small business, and were charged with running the place, you would want to look in occasionally to make sure we hadn't drifted off into la-la land. Shareholders, in contrast, should not need to come to Omaha to monitor how we look and sound," he said.

The highlight of the annual gathering is the Q&A session, in which Buffett and Munger are taking questions from shareholders, analysts and journalists about everything ranging from Berkshire, the stock market, the economic outlook to investment philosophy for around six hours.

Berkshire Hathaway reported on Saturday that its preliminary earnings for the first quarter of this year were 5.59 billion U.S. dollars, up from 5.16 billion dollars in the same period the year earlier, as gains from manufacturing units and the investment portfolio offset a drop at its railroad and insurance businesses.

Source: XINHUA