Moreover, having studied economics at Columbia Business School, Warren Buffett was taught by one of the greatest investors of all time - Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing on whose works I based the criteria for my annual bargain shares portfolios in Investors Chronicle. If that was not enough of a head start in his investment career, Warren Buffett was fortunate enough to work with Mr Graham, too.
Still, he had to put his investment knowledge and skills into practice. On this score, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway investment vehicle has proved itself to be the most successful investment company of all time. In fact an investment in Berkshire Hathaway has returned an incredible 586,817 per cent increase in book value over the 48 years since its inception and until the end of 2012. That represents a compound annual growth rate of 19.7 per cent a year, more than double the annualised total return of 9.4 per cent on the S&P 500 over the same 48-year period.