Buffett Picks His ‘Bear’ for Annual Meeting

Buffett has found his bear.

In his letter to shareholders published on Friday, Warren E. Buffett said that “to spice things up” he wanted to find a money manger with an unfavorable view of Berkshire Hathaway to participate in the company’s annual meeting.

“The only requirement is that you be an investment professional and negative on Berkshire,” he wrote.

On Monday, Mr. Buffett said Douglas A. Kass, a hedge fund manager, would be added to the panel of analysts who question Mr. Buffett and Berkshire’s vice chairman, Charles T. Munger, on stage during Berkshire’s annual gathering in Omaha on May 4.

Mr. Kass is a well-known stock picker by virtue of his writings for the financial Web site, TheStreet.com, and frequent appearances on CNBC.

“I am flattered, honored and surprised,” Mr. Kass, 63, who runs Seabreeze Partners Management in Palm Beach, Fla., said in an interview.

Mr. Buffett who is famous for his swift decision-making when it comes to business, wasted no time in picking his “Berkshire bear.” But also credit Mr. Kass for taking the bull by the horns, so to speak.

Mr. Kass said he had read the Berkshire letter as soon as it came out, just as he had done for the last 40 years. After seeing Mr. Buffett’s solicitation, he began preparing a proposal. Though Mr. Kass is not short Berkshire stock at the moment, in March 2008 he wrote a piece for TheStreet.com, “Kass Katch: 11 Reasons to Short Berkshire” that laid out the bear case for betting against Mr. Buffett.

“I have worshiped at the altar of Warren Buffett since the late 1970s,” Mr. Kass wrote. “Indeed my writings over the last seven years have often been punctuated with Buffett-isms.”

Yet Mr. Kass wrote that Berkshire faced a number of “headwinds.” He cited Mr. Buffett’s advanced ! age (he is now 82), explaining that “there will never be another Warren Buffett.” He also noted that Berkshire’s large size could impede returns, pointing out that even Mr. Buffett had written that the company’s asset base was too large to make outsize gains in the future.

So on Saturday, while watching the Kansas-West Virginia college basketball game, Mr. Kass prepared an application to present to Mr. Buffett. He included bearish Berkshire articles from The Street, as well as a presentation he gave at a value-investing conference last year, in which he advocated shorting the United States bond market.

He also included his résumé, which highlighted that he began his career as a housing analyst at the investment bank Kidder Peabody and later worked for the hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman, who runs Omega Advisors.

Mr. Kass, who said he had never met Mr. Buffett, also supplied him with a list of references of other investors who know Mr. Buffett, including Howard Marks, the chairmn of Oaktree Capital Management, and Mario Gabelli, the head of Gamco Investors. Finally, he asked the CNBC co-hosts Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin to help get his e-mail to Mr. Buffett. Ms. Quick and Mr. Sorkin, the DealBook columnist, are two of the three journalists who ask Mr. Buffett questions at the meeting.

On Monday morning, Mr. Buffett, in a live CNBC interview with Ms. Quick from La Vista, Neb., Mr. Buffett announced that he had selected Mr. Kass.

“Think of tough questions,” Mr. Buffett said to Mr. Kass on the air. “See if you can drive the stock down 10 percent.”

Mr. Kass was in his Palm Beach office, watching CNBC and preparing for the trading day, when Mr. Buffett made the announcement.

“I was as shocked as everyone else,” said Mr. Kass, who grew up in Rockville Centre, N.Y., on Long Island.

He will join two Berkshire “bulls,” the insurance analyst Cliff Gallant of Nomura Securities and Jonathan Brandt of Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb, on sta! ge at the! CenturyLink Center in Omaha.

And even though Mr. Kass will present a negative view on Mr. Buffett’s company, he acknowledges that deep down, he is still an unabashed fan.

“I can’t wait to take a picture with him,” Mr. Kass said.