Warren Buffett and Jimmy aren’t related afterall

May 28th, 2007

It turns out that Jimmy Buffett and Warren Buffett aren’t related afterall. Fortune magazine has an article on the issue: “The Buffett mystery”

About two months ago Warren and Jimmy submitted DNA to 23andMe (an ancestry firm started by Google founder Sergey Brin and his wife, Anne Wojcicki.)

When the results came back a month later, Wojcicki – a 33-year-old Yale grad and former health-care industry analyst – and her associate Joanna Mountain called Warren from 23andMe’s offices, just half a mile from Google’s Mountain View, Calif., campus, and broke the news that he need not include Jimmy in his will. In fact, “I’m as closely related to you as Jimmy is,” said Mountain, the head of 23andMe’s ancestry product line and a former professor of anthropological genetics at Stanford.

As it turns out, Jimmy and Warren do have common ancestors, but you have to go back more than 10,000 years to find them. That’s before surnames, folks. “Bottom line: We’re not related,” Warren wrote to his sister Doris, the family genealogist, who opened this whole can of worms many years ago.

Read the entire article here.

Tagged in In The News, Personal/Family

Buffett appears at Berkshire Hathaway meeting

May 5th, 2007

Jimmy Buffett appeared at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder’s meeting in Omaha, Nebraska on Saturday. Berkshire Hathaway is led by “Uncle Warren” Buffett, a distant cousin of Jimmy.

From the AP: Jimmy Buffett Opens Berkshire Meeting

The chief “parrothead” joked that as Warren’s distant cousin, he was taking over for the 76-year-old billionaire chairman and chief executive.

“Since blood is thicker than water, I’m your new chairman,” the singer said.

Then Jimmy Buffett sang a version of his hit song “Margaritaville” that had been rewritten to honor Berkshire Hathaway and its companies.

And a second article from Reuters: Buffett Says May Hire 4 CIOs, Insurance To Weaken”

The singing Buffett, who performed a version of his hit “Margaritaville” adapted for the meeting, stumbled through lyrics placed at his feet. “Warren gave me a really big budget for a Teleprompter here,” he joked.

Tagged in Concerts, In The News