1969: Buffett Returns the Money and Buys Rockford Bank

Issue 14| 1969- The end of the Buffett Partnership, lessons from retail, and Berkshire’s acquisition of the Illinois National Bank of Rockford.

By 1969, Buffett and Munger were learning a hard truth that would shape the rest of their careers: great businesses stay great, but even venerable ones can’t escape the gravitational pull of capitalism’s creative destruction. Just three years earlier, alongside Sandy Gottesman, they had bought Baltimore’s Hochschild-Kohn for $12 million, a stately depar…