MBA News: CBS ’02 Grad to Manage Berkshire’s Billions

When you receive a $100 million gift from Henry Kravis, one of the world’s most famous investors and a Columbia Business School (CBS) alumnus (’69), you probably do not expect that another unprecedented day will occur so soon after. Well, less than a month later, the world’s most famous investor and another CBS alumnus, Warren Buffett (MS ’51), has named Todd Combs, a virtually unknown investor and a CBS ’02 alumnus to manage Berkshire Hathaway’s paltry $100 billion investment portfolio. Sure, Kravis gave a whopping sum of money to the school, but the notion that one can go to CBS and then, only eight years later, manage billions, is immeasurable from a reputational perspective. A second encore, CBS?