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Warren Buffett Wannabes: 10 Stocks Trying To Be The Next Berkshire Hathaway

This article is more than 8 years old.

Earlier in May, Berkshire Hathaway  shareholders swarmed Omaha, Nebraska to take in the wisdom of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger at the company's annual meeting, but you don't have to attend Berkshire's so-called 'Woodstock for capitalists' to find a Buffett-styled investor in your midst.

There are well over a dozen Berkshire-like stocks that trade on public stock markets every day, often with little fanfare. These 'wannabe Buffetts' span markets as far flung as cable and media, hotels, hamburgers and energy, in addition to Berkshire-type businesses such as insurance, railroads and industrials. But they all share attributes that Buffett champions: Leadership that owns or controls a significant piece of company, a record of winning investments, a desire to grow their respective businesses over the long-term through acquisitions and organic spending, and a savvy use of corporate purse strings to finance expansion.

While some Buffett  wannabees on Forbes' list operate like Berkshire, using insurance float to fund investment in disparate business lines and publicly-traded securities, others are more specialized than the 'Oracle of Omaha' and focused on niche markets where they have a narrow expertise. A handful of Wall Streeters who once might have been deemed 'corporate raiders' or buyout kingpins, meanwhile, are beginning to display their Buffett stripes.

Markel Corporation

Markel's leadership of Alan Kirshner, Steven Markel, Anthony Markel and Thomas Gayner use billion dollar insurance and reinsurance businesses built over the span of many decades to support a $4 billion public stock portfolio, and finance direct investment in private manufacturing, real estate and healthcare companies. It is the Berkshire model on a smaller scale and Markel has its own operational and value investing philosophies, The Markel Style. Chief investment officer Gayner is a regular at Berkshire's shareholder meeting, where he often congregates with his own investors before they fly off from Omaha.

If the strategy is similar, so is the out-performance. Markel shares have returned  127% over the past 10-years, slightly below Berkshire's 160% gain, but a healthy outperformance of the S&P 500's 81% gain.

Liberty Media and John Malone

Warren Buffett may go down as the greatest-ever stockpicker, but Liberty Media's John Malone rivals Buffett as a shrewd and opportunistic purveyor of capital, and a wizard at deferring corporate tax.

Malone built up Tele-Communications Incorporated over the span of about 25 years before dishing it off to AT&T for $48 billion in 1998. He then grew Liberty Media through acquisitions, opportunistic inventiveness and asset swaps into a media powerhouse that touches nearly every corner and company in the communications industry. Through Liberty, Malone's assets and minority investments include Live Nation, SiriuxXM Holdings, the Atlanta Braves, Discovery Communications , Starz, Charter Communications , DirecTV, and a flurry of Liberty-named stocks such as Liberty Global , Liberty Ventures, Liberty Interactive , and Liberty Tripadvisor.

It might take a good investment banker a few hours to accurately plot out the total return of Malone's business interests assembled through acquisitions, spinoffs and JV's -- this 16-page, 4,000-word document titled 'Liberty Media Stock Cost Basis' is a good starting point -  but Malone's mother ship, Liberty Media, has returned 28.8% since January 2013 when it spun off Starz.

Howard Hughes

Bill Ackman, one of Wall Street's most creative and controversial hedge fund investors, is beginning to look less and less like a fast-trading hedge fund manager more and more like a Warren Buffett-styled builder of businesses who also is content to sit on investments over many years. In 2014, Ackman took a Buffett-like plunge, selling a piece of his general partnership, Pershing Square Holdings, on European stock markets as a closed-end fund and creating a base of capital to make investments that "compound over a high rate of return over a long period of time."

With the permanent capital, Ackman and Pershing Square are increasingly focused on playing a role in building businesses like Canadian Pacific, Zoetis and chemical company Air Products. After jetting by private plane to Omaha for Berkshire's shareholder meeting in the first weekend of May, Ackman expressed his attraction to so-called 'platform stocks' such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals , in addition to Buffett-wannabe nominees Jarden  and 3G Capital-backed firms like Restaurant Brands International , Anheuser-Busch InBev and Kraft/Heinz at the Ira Sohn Investment Conference on May 5.

Forbes' May 25 Cover Story profiled The Howard Hughes Corporation, an unheralded real estate developer Ackman created from the carcass of General Growth Properties  that he hopes to build into a powerhouse. Howard Hughes is Ackman's vehicle to show his Buffett-esque chops. So far so good.

Since being spun in Nov. 2010, Howard Hughes shares have gained over 260%, more than tripling the return of the S&P 500.

The Would-Be Buffett Wannabes

Of course Buffett, the world's third richest man according to Forbes' 2015 Billionaires List, and $360 billion market-cap Berkshire Hathaway have attracted many copycats, and not all have lived up to the hype. For instance, Forbes recently chronicled the struggles of 'world-be Buffett wannabe' Sardar Biglari, chairman and CEO of NYSE-listed Biglari Holdings (ticker: BH). While Biglari makes every effort to resemble Buffett -- his website, annual meeting and shareholder letters are formatted in the Berkshire style -- the results have been decidedly sub par.

Biglari took control of burger chain Steak n Shake, helping to revive the company during the Great Recession. However, performance has fallen by the wayside as he's tried to build a conglomerate. In May, Biglari Holdings reported it second consecutive operating loss and its shares are off 11% year-to-date - with losses accelerating after the company narrowly won a bitter proxy fight. The only person making money off of Biglari is its CEO, who's taken over $75 million in compensation in recent years, despite poor performance.

Not all wannabe Buffett's are worth investing in.