兩個大相徑庭的億萬富翁樣本

Sir Philip Green and Warren Buffett — the permanently tanned, ostentatious rag-trade entrepreneur and the soft-spoken, frugal Sage of Omaha — could not be more different.

菲利浦•格林爵士(Sir Philip Green)與沃倫•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)在各方面可謂都大相徑庭——一位是皮膚黝黑、愛炫耀的成衣貿易企業家，另一位是溫和、節儉的“奧馬哈聖人(Sage of Omaha)”。

Yet they share a fierce desire to protect their reputations and bear the scars of having held on to certain investments for too long.

然而，兩人都有維護自己聲譽的強烈慾望，也都帶着持有某些投資過久的傷痕。

When Mr Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 it was an ailing owner of textile mills in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Now, it is best known as a highly successful listed holding company. For two decades, though, the declining mills were a thorn in his side that he refused to excise.

巴菲特1965年接管伯克希爾哈撒韋公司(Berkshire Hathaway)時，後者只擁有馬薩諸塞州新貝德福德幾家陷入困境的紡織廠。如今，伯克希爾哈撒韋公司以一家極爲成功的上市控股公司聞名於世。然而在長達20年期間，這幾家瀕臨破產的紡織廠曾一直是巴菲特不願丟掉的包袱。

Sir Philip’s purchase and turnround of BHS in 2000 confirmed his talent as an entrepreneur and owner, but as he told me and my colleague Andrea Felsted last year, a few months after finally offloading the BHS stores to a consortium of little-known buyers for ￡1: “I wish I’d have sold it a long, long time back … I should have sold it, but didn’t.”

格林爵士2000年收購了零售集團BHS，使之扭虧爲盈，這證明了他作爲一名企業家和老闆的天賦，但他在去年接受我與同事安德烈•費爾斯特德(Andrea Felsted)採訪時——那是在他以1英鎊的價格最終將BHS連鎖店轉給一個由幾家不知名買家組成的財團幾個月後——表示：“我希望本可以早就把它賣掉……我本應賣掉，但是我沒有。”

Reputational risk motivated both investors. Sir Philip’s words may ring hollow for BHS’s 11,000 staff now it is tumbling into administration, but he told us he had been reluctant to cut his longstanding ties to the business: “At the end of the day, I’ve got people here who have been with me from the beginning … I don’t want to just close the door. You do your best to ensure that the people there are OK.”

聲譽風險是激勵這兩位投資者的動力。對正在進入破產管理程序的BHS連鎖店的1.1萬名員工而言，格林爵士的話聽起來或許有些空洞，但他告訴我們，他本不願切斷與BHS之間的長期紐帶：“歸根結底，我身邊有從一開始就跟着我的人……我不想只是把門關上。我要盡全力確保大家過得不錯。”

Mr Buffett, who had been appalled by the adverse reaction when he quit an earlier investment in a Nebraska windmill manufacturer, was afraid of the local backlash that might occur if he closed Berkshire down with the loss of jobs. Justifying his continued ownership of the textile mills to his partners in 1969, he wrote: “I have no desire to trade severe human dislocations for a few percentage points [of] additional return per annum.”

當年，對之前退出內布拉斯加一家風車製造商所引發的負面反應感到驚愕的巴菲特，擔心關閉伯克希爾的紡織廠會造成工人失業，引發當地反彈。1969年，爲了向合夥人證明繼續持有這些紡織廠的合理性，他寫道：“我不想用嚴重的社會混亂換取每年幾個百分點的額外回報。”

Nevertheless, in 1985, he finally had to close the last remnants of the original Berkshire, granting the 400 workers he laid off only “a couple of months’ extra pay”, according to The Snowball, Alice Schroeder’s biography. Spending 20 years trying to revive the business was one of his biggest mistakes, he admitted in 2001, even though by the time he sold it, it was, in Ms Schroeder’s words, “a flyspeck” on the holding company.

然而，根據愛麗絲•施羅德(Alice Schroeder)所著的巴菲特傳記《滾雪球》(The Snowball)一書，1985年，他最終不得不關閉了原伯克希爾公司旗下最後幾家工廠，並且只給被裁員的400名工人“兩個月的額外報酬”。他在2001年承認，用20年時間試圖重振紡織業務是他最大的錯誤之一，儘管在施羅德的筆下，在他最終將其出售時，這些紡織廠只是這家控股公司的“一個小不點”。

Since those early days, Mr Buffett’s fear of public opprobrium has led him on the whole, to choose discretion over publicity, and to promote an avuncular niceness. The policy has turned him into an acceptable face of capitalism.

從早期開始，巴菲特對公衆指責的恐懼讓他總體而言選擇謹慎（而不是曝光），並展現自己慈祥美好的一面。這一策略將他打造成了一位受到社會認同的資本主義代言人。

Sir Philip’s well-publicised tabloid lifestyle and belligerent relationship with the press have instead made him a high-profile hate figure. Mr Buffett is probably not as angelic as he is portrayed; Sir Philip is probably not as diabolical. But there are lessons there for would-be billionaires everywhere.

格林爵士經常見諸小報的張揚生活方式及其與媒體間劍拔弩張的關係，使他成爲一個引人注目的憎恨對象。巴菲特或許並不像其被描繪得那般善良；格林爵士也並非媒體宣稱得那麼道德敗壞。但世界各地的準億萬富翁們都可以從他們身上吸取經驗。