Taipei businessman Rocky Liang (
Liang, 34, who was outbid by US$100 in the final minutes of last year's annual charity auction, said he will lunch with the Berkshire Hathaway Inc chairman next month after pledging to make a donation for an undisclosed amount.
"We've been waiting for this for nine years," said Liang by telephone from Shanghai. "It's worth it to have lunch with the world's best."
Liang will be joined by colleagues from his Olympic Marketing Training Consultancy (
Buffett, 76, the world's third-richest man, typically spends from two-and-a-half to three hours discussing anything except specific stocks with the auction winner and seven guests at a New York steakhouse.
Bidding in this year's online auction, which ends today, reached US$312,121.21 yesterday -- about half the US$620,100 record set last year by California investor Duan Yongping (
Liang, co-author of a book called Surpass Buffett, said he had expected to recover the cost of last year's bid through speeches, classes and a book called A US$620,000 Lunch.
His company runs motivational and training courses with titles such as "Learn from the World's Best."
Buffett is known as the Sage of Omaha by admirers for transforming Berkshire Hathaway from a failing textile manufacturer into a US$165 billion holding company by acquiring out-of-favor securities and businesses in dozens of industries.
He was the world's second-richest man for seven years until he was displaced by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the Forbes magazine Web site reported in April.
Liang, who didn't bid in this year's auction, overcame adolescent depression and two suicide attempts to start Olympic Marketing, according to a biography posted on the consultant's Web site.
The company had NT$300 million (US$9.1 million) in revenue last year, spokesman Jack Chen said.
Buffett offers his time to benefit the San Francisco-based Glide Foundation, where his late wife Susan volunteered. Since 2003, when San Jose, California-based EBay Inc took over the bidding from a live auctioneer, the lunches have raised US$1.4 million for Glide. This is the eighth annual auction.
"Why waste the money bidding for lunch with Buffett," said Michael On (洪瑞泰), who looks after the equivalent of US$100 million as managing director at Beyond Asset Management Co (晉昂證券投顧) and has written two books on Buffett's value-investing style. "He isn't going to share any secrets with you."
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by