More reviews by the Washington Post, Fortune, Wall Street Journal (by James Grant of “Grant’s Interest Rate Observer”) and the Christian Science Monitor.

In the interview linked above Mr. Van Den Berg mentions Microsoft, Cisco, Dell and many others. He described in more detail Microsoft and other cases in his November 2010 “Value Investor Newsletter”, an 84-page monster PDF available for free in Century’s website. The first 47 pages are dedicated to macro considerations – the official line, as per the second answer in the above interview, is that they only care about inflation and interest rates.

Our first contact with Mr. Van Den Berg was in an 2004 interview/ talk transcript on Outstanding Investor Digest. All 20 pages are very interesting and, at the time, became the subject of a “study group” meeting for our analysts. The link above requires a subscription, and if one is serious about value investing then one will pony up for OID – it’s that simple. OK, Century Management has an 18-page PDF in its website (PDF) that pretty much solves the problem, but again: OID is worth it.

We found a free link to a 1996 OID transcript that we couldn’t yet read entirely but it’s already interesting, and on CM’s website there’s a link to a 26-page PDF excerpt of the full, 45-page 2006 OID piece. Hint: they say in that page that you can ask for the entire article and we’ve done just that. If they let us publish the full monty here, we’ll update this post with it.

There are 8 of Century’s own videos on Youtube and a further GuruFocus interview with him back in December 2010.

We’ll embed a few videos here as soon as possible, but there’s a lot of material nonetheless.

One highlight is the interview with Dr. Chris Gibson-Smith (embedded in this post), Chairman of the London Stock Exchange. We highlight in this post several excerpts worth considering – it’s intended for business in general, but can also be framed for the specifics of investment management.

Here’s the 7:41 video (highlights below):

Highlights:

- His life history is interesting: the balance of science and business shifting over the years, and it clearly influenced the highlight below:

- “I’ve worked in half a dozen industries in depth, and I’ve found the same thing wherever I go: every sector has its own technical knowledge, and you have to master that knowledge, otherwise you can’t be in the sector. But above that, the thing that is true particularly as you rise to levels of leadership and senior management, it’s the ability to think and act. The thinking creates the context, the framework, the vision, the intention; but it has no meaning unless you act. But the action has no focus unless you’ve thought. And it’s this balance between deep thought and precise action that produces effective results.“ — We’d add that this can be true as long as incentives are aligned, and the environment (including the teamwork) is positive and so on – but he mentioned the teamwork part below.

- He then talked about how he was kind of surprised that he was getting successful in business, and continuously so, and the surprise was due to the fact that he was so involved in the day-to-day. So he stepped back to wonder why it happened, and his takeaway is very interesting. According to him, he found in this exercise that one is successful or not “because of the quality of the people you worked with and the way you worked with them. Overwhelmingly it was the way in which you interacted with people that was at the center of one’s ability to contribute. And unquestionably I learned that in business – it’s [also] true in life – and it remains the most important thing about doing business for me.”

- Finally, a very interesting take on his duties as Chairman and leader, which show his specific skill set or strong points (and it makes sense given his “scientific method” past). It may not work for everyone, but it’s his way: I’m emphatically clear on my duties as leader. So I carry an un-assignable responsibility for the future of my organizations. It is not dilutable, but it’s completely shareable. So I think a great deal and then I involve people in the organization and they solve all the questions. My real task is to figure out the questions and then give it to other people to work out the answers, and I think I do that in a repeated pattern wherever I go.”

On tour to promote his book “The Big Short“, Michael Lewis interviews have been popping up all over the Internet. You can find some of the best inside. Required reading is this excerpt from the book at Vanity Fair’s website. Great stuff, we especially liked this bit: “I hated discussing ideas with investors,” (Mike Burry said), “because I then become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process. Once you became an idea’s defender, you had a harder time changing your mind about it.”

Have a great Easter Sunday!

UPDATE: Mike Burry wrote an op-ed in the New York Times recently on how he saw the crisis and why the Fed should have seen it too. We especially like this bit: “I demanded daily collateral settlement — if positions moved in our favor, I wanted cash posted to our account the next day. This was something I knew that Goldman Sachs and other derivatives dealers did not demand of AAA-rated A.I.G.”.  Not only did he get the intellectual challenge right, but he also followed through quite well in terms of execution. Impressive enough, and all by himself.

VIDEOS

Bloomberg Television interview (42:37):

CBS’ 60 Minutes segments:

- Inside the collapse, part 1:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

- Inside the collapse, part 2:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

- Wall Street misfit (on Mike Burry):

Watch CBS News Videos Online

- The $8.4 Bi bet:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

By the way, it’s downright funny when you realize how many times Don Graham uses the expression “it’s hard to describe…” when trying to explain the differences between Warren and Berkshire to other managers and companies.

Bill Gates says that he was a software engineer when he first met Buffett, who in his mind was an “investor”. He was amazed when Buffett asked him business questions about IBM, HP, how was competition like, how did the companies price its products and so on… “Warren’s investing was just an outcome of having this incredible model about business and business values“, he says.

And the David “Sandy” Gottesman part is shorter and lighter but worth the while.