Charlie Munger Quotes

It is always important that we have transparency, that we have shareholder protection. Then again, I think it is important that there are not so many regulations that management can't make a decision without asking a lawyer whether he can do it.

You have more independent eyes scrutinizing the decision-making and financial statements of companies.

Competition leads both drug companies and private regulators to be trustworthy. If they are not trustworthy, they die.

The financial crisis is a stark reminder that transparency and disclosure are essential in today's marketplace.

We've done all the work that needs to be done on the inside to make sure there's no malfeasance inside Chrysler.

Wells Fargo had a glitch - the truth of the matter is they made a business judgement that was wrong. I don't think anything is fundamentally wrong.

I have had no role whatsoever in relation to any investigation of Burisma, or any of its officers. I explicitly limited my role to focus on corporate governance best practices to facilitate Burisma's desire to expand globally.

A lot of people think if you just had more process and more compliance -- checks and doublechecks and so forth -- you could create a better result in the world. Well, Berkshire has had practically no process. We had hardly any internal auditing until they forced it on us. We just try to operate in a seamless web of deserved trust and be careful whom we trust.

Opacity on extreme levels is not addressed anywhere, including Dodd-Frank.

I do believe that banks are special - they are very leveraged institutions by nature; therefore, it's even more critical to ensure that the governance and the process of running a banking company are well-organised, managed and regulated.

As for the company, I did all I could from the very outset of this affair to remove Yukos and its employees from danger.

In a global arena, what our businessmen need in order to be competitive is transparency and a level playing-field.

You're doing a major merger, you got to hope you didn't get it wrong. That's the view of any CEO.

There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.

I always assign auditors to strictly supervise the businesses.

For years, critics of Fannie Mae have warned that it does not give them enough information to judge its risks.

In the ideal scenario, consultants work for a board, and they're helping the board check on certain aspects of management. Their work is made public and transparent.

I don't think anybody has indicated that I did anything but do my job at Fannie Mae.

Clearly as you move to being a public company, probably even more than growth, there is a huge value based on predictability.

If you're going to run a public company, be absolutely certain of what the parameters are, what the clarity is, that you can explain it to yourselves and explain it externally.

In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing.

China is littered with the wrecks of failed joint ventures. Investors are moving toward wholly-owned subsidiaries.

The time is coming when all businesses will have to be done with glass pockets.

The Commission concludes that the banking supervisors failed to adequately and proactively identify and police the weaknesses of the banks and thrifts or their poor corporate governance and risk management, often maintaining satisfactory ratings on institutions until just before their collapse. This failure was caused by many factors, including beliefs that regulation was unduly burdensome, that financial institutions were capable of self-regulation, and that regulators should not interfere with activities reported as profitable.

The regulators can’t do it. These institutions are just too large and complex.