Warren Buffett: ‘Every American citizen ought to watch' this documentary on the Fortune 500's first female CEO
"Check out 'Becoming Katharine Graham' and you'll see a remarkable story of American history," Buffett told attendees at the meeting, which took place on May 4. The documentary, which started streaming on Amazon Prime in February, covers the life of the longtime publisher of The Washington Post who led the newspaper through pivotal historical moments, including its reporting on the Pentagon Papers and Watergate.
"There are a good many portions in there that I, who lived through that period, didn't know about at that time. And I think every American citizen ought to watch it," said Buffett, 94, who also announced his impending retirement as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway during the annual meeting.
Buffett has "no financial interest" in the film, he said, but he does appear in it as a longtime friend of Graham's who used to own a significant stake in the Post. Graham died in 2001, at age 84.
Buffett's relationship with the newspaper goes back more than eight decades. When he was young, his family moved to Washington, D.C. upon his father's election to U.S. Congress. At age 13, Buffett woke up at 4:30 every morning to earn money delivering The Washington Post to his neighbors.Decades later, Buffett invested $11 million in The Washington Post Company, the holding company that owned the newspaper. He made the investment in 1973, just a year after Graham took the reins to become the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Buffett wrote a letter to Graham at the time, informing her that he was buying significant shares in her public company, which he believed was "dramatically undervalued." In the letter, which Graham included in her 1997 autobiography, "Personal History," Buffett also included his endorsement of Graham as a CEO.
After buying those shares, Buffett served on the company's board of directors for nearly four decades, until 2011 — often sharing his investment advice with Graham. In the documentary, Graham noted about Buffett: "He used to come to board meetings with about 20 annual reports, and he would take me through these annual reports. I mean, it was like going to business school with Warren Buffet."
At Berkshire Hathaway's 2013 meeting, Buffett lauded the number of large U.S. companies run by women: "It's moving in the right direction ... But, you know, I hope it keeps moving and moving faster." There were 20 female CEOs in the Fortune 500 at the time. Last year, there were 52, according to Fortune.
Buffett's bet on Graham and the newspaper proved fruitful. The company's "stock went up 40-for-1 when she was CEO," he noted during the 2013 meeting.
By 2014, Buffett held a 23.4% stake in the company, now called Graham Holdings, which owns an assortment of properties in the media, health care and automotive industries. (The company sold The Washington Post to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for $250 million in 2013.)
When Buffett sold his shares in Graham Holdings in 2014, his stake was valued at nearly $1.1 billion, The Washington Post reported at the time.
At the 2025 Berkshire meeting, Buffett said documentary viewers would likely learn a lot from Graham's life and career: "People don't remember enough about Katharine Graham, [her] story shaped America in many ways."
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