One of the companies I wanted to write about in Buffett’s Early Investments (pre-order here: https://amzn.to/3TvSHSc) was Merchants’ National Properties. I couldn’t find the right documents so I picked something else. But I did come across this letter from Warren Buffett to an outside director (the document is almost 70 years old, so it’s in bad shape). Buffett is questioning an “outside director” (his quotations clearly indicating his skepticism on the director’s independence) for exchanging MNP stock at a low valuation to management members who owned Retail Properties, enriching themselves at the expense of minority shareholders.

Young Buffett was far more confrontational with management and boards in the earliest part of his career than is commonly believed.

Buffett sold this stock to Walter Schloss at $14 a share in 1963. Schloss talked about it in this interview

(https://www.grahamanddoddsville.net/wordpress/Files/Gurus/Walter%20Schloss/Schloss-Sixty-Five-Years.pdf) with Jim Grant, when it was worth $553, about an 11% CAGR at the time (not including the additional return from dividends). Buffett sold MNP and a handful of other stocks to Schloss to repay Schloss for selling him his Dempster Mill stock when Warren was in the midst of taking control of that company in 1960. MNP is still publicly traded today over-the-counter.