<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Bill-Gates-delivers-a-speech-on-Oct.-11-2023-in-Brussels-Belgium-820x462.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-431529" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Bill-Gates-delivers-a-speech-on-Oct.-11-2023-in-Brussels-Belgium-820x462.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Bill-Gates-delivers-a-speech-on-Oct.-11-2023-in-Brussels-Belgium-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Bill-Gates-delivers-a-speech-on-Oct.-11-2023-in-Brussels-Belgium-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Bill-Gates-delivers-a-speech-on-Oct.-11-2023-in-Brussels-Belgium-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Bill-Gates-delivers-a-speech-on-Oct.-11-2023-in-Brussels-Belgium.jpg 929w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Bill Gates delivers a speech on Oct. 11, 2023 in Brussels, Belgium. Thierry Monasse | Getty Images News | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES —&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/MSFT/">Microsoft</a>&nbsp;co-founder Bill Gates on Friday shared his “big hope” for this year’s U.N. climate conference and said he was “definitely glass half-full” when it comes to preventing the worst of what the climate crisis has in store.



Speaking as world leaders convened in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on the second day of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/cop28/">COP28 summit</a>, Gates said he believed there were many encouraging climate solutions but that these projects required the necessary support from policymakers and business leaders.



“Now, we need to take what looks very promising and scale it up, build the pilot plants, prove those out,” Gates told CNBC’s Tania Bryer on Friday. “And that requires government policies, it requires the big corporations to come in and so all these different communities that have to come together, they are represented here.”



COP28 is the United Nations’&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/29/cop28-climate-summit-a-showdown-is-brewing-over-money-oil-and-carbon.html">biggest and most important annual climate conference</a>. The two-week long summit got underway on Thursday, with more than 160 world leaders expected to attend — alongside an estimated 70,000 delegates.



It is regarded as a pivotal opportunity to accelerate action to address the climate crisis at a time when global temperatures are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/08/climate-scientists-warn-2023-likely-to-be-the-hottest-year-on-record.html">hitting record highs</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/04/south-america-argentina-and-chile-gripped-by-extreme-mid-winter-heat.html">extreme weather events</a>&nbsp;are affecting people worldwide.



“You know, I think 70,000 people and it seems like wow, do we need that many? But in fact, a lot of meetings here will be where those companies get the backing and the kind of experience of big companies, the government help and these entrepreneurs are going to come together,” Gates said.



“And so, facilitating the speed of innovation and the speed of the scale up, that’s my big hope for COP28.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-magic-of-invention-and-scale-up"><a></a>‘Magic of invention and scale-up’</h2>



Asked about criticism of conferences such as COP28, given that some feel they are often&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/greta-thunberg-says-cop26-climate-summit-is-a-failure-and-a-pr-event.html">all talk and no action</a>, Gates defended the platform as a means to help drive progress across the globe.



“The collaboration between those sectors has improved a great deal,” Gates told CNBC.



“We are falling short of our aspirations in many areas and coming and saying, you know, how do we catch up? Can we do better in one area? Which countries are doing particularly well? Are there models from that?”



“It is a super important issue,” he continued. “It’s definitely glass half-full.”



“We haven’t gone as fast as we’d like and yet particularly, if you see in the innovation pavilion, these smaller companies, the ideas cover all the areas of emissions. And there’s hope that many of these clean approaches given time won’t cost extra,” Gates added.



The billionaire philanthropist said the costs of solar electricity and EV batteries have come down.



“And so, that same magic of invention and scale up, if we apply that broadly &#8230; I have hope that despite these delays and incredible complexity that the message coming out of these meetings does help drive progress,” Gates said.

Bill-Gates-delivers-a-speech-on-Oct.-11-2023-in-Brussels-Belgium

Bill Gates shares his ‘big hope’ for COP28 as world leaders gather for climate talks

This is the first deal approved at COP28

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Countries-at-COP28-approve-climate-disaster-fund-deal-details-in-early-breakthrough-820x462.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-431341" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Countries-at-COP28-approve-climate-disaster-fund-deal-details-in-early-breakthrough-820x462.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Countries-at-COP28-approve-climate-disaster-fund-deal-details-in-early-breakthrough-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Countries-at-COP28-approve-climate-disaster-fund-deal-details-in-early-breakthrough-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Countries-at-COP28-approve-climate-disaster-fund-deal-details-in-early-breakthrough-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Countries-at-COP28-approve-climate-disaster-fund-deal-details-in-early-breakthrough.jpg 929w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A man wearing a thawb walks past flags of nations participating in the UNFCCC COP28 Climate Conference the day before its official opening on November 29, 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — Countries at the U.N. COP28 summit on Thursday agreed on deal details for a disaster fund to help nations reeling from damages caused by the climate crisis.



This agreement, struck on the opening day of the conference in the United Arab Emirates, builds on a deal for a loss and damage fund brokered at COP27 in Egypt last year — widely seen as a historic breakthrough and potential turning point in the climate crisis.



Many key arrangements were left unresolved at the time, such as who should pay into the fund, how large should it be and who should administer the money.



The operationalization of the fund on Thursday prompted a standing ovation from delegates in the audience.



So far, the pledges to the fund include $100 million from Germany, $100 million from the United Arab Emirates, $17 million from the U.S. and $10 million from Japan. The U.K. has also pledged sums into the fund.



Payments are made into the fund on a voluntary basis, and all developing countries are eligible to directly access the resources. The World Bank will be the interim host to the fund for a period of four years — an issue that has previously fueled tensions between high-income and low-income countries.



In emailed comments, Friederike Roder, vice president of sustainable development advocacy group Global Citizen, described the announcement of a loss and damage fund as a “historic decision,” but added that “a fund is worthless without any dollars in it” and urged wealthy countries to step and announce significant pledges.



“The needs for loss and damage and other climate finance will continue to increase. This is why we also need, additionally, to tap into other financing sources, such as international taxes,” Roder said.



High-income countries, which account for the bulk of historical greenhouse gas emissions, have long opposed the creation of a loss and damage fund to compensate low-income nations.



Advocates argue that the fund is required to account for climate impacts — including hurricanes, floods and wildfires or slow-onset impacts such as rising sea levels — that countries cannot defend against, either because the risks are unavoidable, or because they lack the financial resources to do so.



Avinash Persaud, special climate envoy to Barbados, said that the deal reflects “a hard fought historic agreement.”



“It shows recognition that climate loss and damage is not a distant risk but part of the lived reality of almost half of the world’s population and that money is needed to reconstruct and rehabilitate if we are not to let the climate crisis reverse decades of development in mere moments,” he added.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-boost-to-momentum">A boost to momentum?</h2>



 In Dubai, Alex Scott, an analyst at environmental think tank E3G, described the deal to establish a loss and damage fund as a “massive” breakthrough that reflected “a huge show of global cooperation.”



“There is often a lot of skepticism at these multilateral spaces because they are often getting every country to agree, so they always end up being the lowest common denominator and end up with diplomatic speak that doesn’t really make sense to people,” Scott told CNBC.



“But this is very clear. This is a decision to establish the fund that they agreed they would try to establish last year. I think it will be a good momentum boost for the rest of the negotiations.”



Policymakers will now need to reflect on how much they are willing to put into the fund, Scott said.



Low-income countries have previously called for sums of at least $100 billion a year by 2030, to be put toward the loss and damage caused by the climate crisis.



“I would expect some countries might hold back their pledges and wait until the very end, as part of the negotiating tactics to bring the final package together,” Scott said.

Countries-at-COP28-approve-climate-disaster-fund-deal-details-in-early-breakthrough

Countries at COP28 approve climate disaster fund deal details in early breakthrough

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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107338543-1700826590772-gettyimages-1808236454-dji_20231122104648_0051_d_odwns4n3-820x462.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-430869" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107338543-1700826590772-gettyimages-1808236454-dji_20231122104648_0051_d_odwns4n3-820x462.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107338543-1700826590772-gettyimages-1808236454-dji_20231122104648_0051_d_odwns4n3-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107338543-1700826590772-gettyimages-1808236454-dji_20231122104648_0051_d_odwns4n3-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107338543-1700826590772-gettyimages-1808236454-dji_20231122104648_0051_d_odwns4n3-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107338543-1700826590772-gettyimages-1808236454-dji_20231122104648_0051_d_odwns4n3.jpeg 929w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">In this aerial view water vapour and exhaust rise from the steel mill of Salzgitter AG, one Europe’s largest steel producers, on November 22, 2023 in Salzgitter, Germany. Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Policymakers and business leaders from across the globe are set to arrive in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for the world’s biggest and most important annual climate conference.



The COP28 summit, which starts on Thursday and is scheduled to run through to Dec. 12, will provide a critical forum for government officials, business leaders and campaign groups to accelerate action to tackle the climate crisis.



The pressure to deliver is immense. Global temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions continue to break records, with no continent left untouched by more frequent and intense extreme weather events.



Here’s a look at what’s at stake at COP28.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-money"><a></a>Money</h2>



Climate finance is always a hotly debated talking point at the U.N. summit and COP28 promises to be no different. It refers to the financing needed to support efforts to both significantly reduce emissions and adjust to the effects of climate change.



Talks in Bonn, Germany earlier in the year became gridlocked over this issue of finance and support, with some low-income countries refusing to talk about slashing emissions unless there was an equal focus on how wealthy nations would provide cash to them.



It laid the groundwork for what one environmental group expects to be a “huge fight” between high-income and low-income nations at COP28.



Data published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in mid-November, however, showed that rich countries had finally fulfilled their promise to provide $100 billion a year to low-income countries — albeit two years after the deadline. It is hoped that this could go some way to fostering goodwill at the summit.



“COP28 has a massive role to play in setting the political direction for a transformational shift in climate ambition. But without finance and economic confidence, countries won’t be able to act at the pace and scale needed,” said Alex Scott, program lead at E3G, an independent climate think tank.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>Loss and damage</h2>



Another major financial issue will be to operationalize the so-called “loss and damage” fund, arguably the main legacy of last year’s COP27 summit in Egypt.



Rich countries, despite accounting for the bulk of historical greenhouse gas emissions, have long opposed the creation of a fund to compensate low-income countries for the loss and damage they’ve caused.



Advocates argue, however, that it is required to account for climate impacts — including hurricanes, floods and wildfires or slow-onset impacts such as rising sea levels — that countries cannot defend against because the risks are unavoidable, or the countries cannot afford it.



The establishment of the loss and damage fund at COP27 was seen as a historic breakthrough and potential turning point in the climate crisis, although many key details were left unresolved — such as who should pay into the fund, how large should it be and who should administer the money.



Countries reached a consensus on how to approach loss and damage payments during tense discissions that ran into overtime earlier this month. Yet it remains to be seen whether this fragile agreement can hold for countries to successfully operationalize the fund in the UAE.



“Billions of people, lives and livelihoods who are vulnerable to the effects of climate change depend upon the adoption of this recommended approach at COP28,” Sultan al-Jaber, president-designate of COP28, said in a statement on Nov. 5.



Al-Jaber was seen as a controversial choice to lead COP28 discussions in Dubai given that he also works as the head of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.



Climate activists criticized his appointment saying his position as an oil executive reflects a clear conflict of interest — akin to “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.” His office has said he will play a pivotal role in the intergovernmental discussions to build consensus at the event.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>Fossil fuels</h2>



Melanie Robinson, global climate program director at the World Resources Institute, said COP28 will be the biggest accountability moment for climate action in history — and fossil fuels will be at the heart of the talks.



She anticipated three main debates around the use of oil, gas and coal — the burning of which is the chief driver of the climate crisis.



“So, one is this ‘phase out’ or ‘phase down’ [of fossil fuels]. Actually, for us at WRI, since neither of those has got a timeline, the most important thing for us is that whatever language they agree to, it needs to send a really strong signal that the world is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels and it will do so equitably,” Robinson told CNBC via telephone.



“The second, but perhaps slightly linked, issue is whether it is ‘abated’ or ‘unabated.’ There’s a whole debate about the role of carbon capture technology abating emissions and there are certainly some oil companies and producer countries who would try to have us believe that with CCS [carbon capture and storage] we can continue to burn fossil fuels and still achieve our climate goals,” she continued.



“We think the science suggests that is simply not true. There is no credible scenario where CCS will allow continued use of fossil fuels, let alone expanding oil and gas. So, for us, it is important that COP28 acknowledges the limited role CCS will play.”



Abated fossil fuels refer to the process in which emissions are captured and stored with carbon capture and storage technologies. The definition of unabated fossil fuels lacks clarity, despite the term cropping up in several climate commitments, but it is said to refer to fossil fuels produced and used without interventions to substantially reduce the amount of emitted greenhouse gases.



Robinson said the third talking point on fossil fuels was that there is a risk Dubai “could become a platform celebrating pledges from the oil and gas industry that fail to curb the emissions of their products.”



She warned that any net zero pledge from the oil and gas industry that doesn’t involve so-called Scope 3 emissions would not be significant. Scope 3 emissions refer to the emissions produced from across a company’s entire value chain, and often account for the lion’s share of a firm’s carbon footprint.



“For us, it’s a bit like a cigarette company saying that whatever happens to cigarettes after they leave the factory gate has got nothing to do with them. So, that I think we have to watch,” Robinson said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>A course correction?</h2>



One unique component of the Dubai climate talks is the conclusion of the first global stocktake since the landmark Paris Agreement — the 2015 accord that aims to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.



The world has already warmed by around 1.1 degrees Celsius, scientists say, after over a century of burning fossil fuels as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use. Indeed, it is this temperature increase that is fueling a series of extreme weather events around the world.



The stocktake is the main tool through which progress under the Paris Agreement is assessed. According to the U.N. global stocktake synthesis report released in early September, only transformational change will be enough to get the world back on track to meeting its climate goals.

107338543-1700826590772-gettyimages-1808236454-dji_20231122104648_0051_d_odwns4n3

A showdown is brewing over money, oil and carbon. Here’s what’s at stake at the COP28 climate summit

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1124907100-820x547.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-430859" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1124907100-820x547.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1124907100-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1124907100-135x90.jpg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1124907100-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1124907100-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1124907100-scaled.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., speaks during the Daily Journal Corp. shareholder meeting in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019. Munger discussed investing, banks, China, and health care at the meeting. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Billionaire Charlie Munger, the investing sage who made a fortune even before he became Warren Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway, has died at age 99.



Munger died Tuesday, according to a press release from Berkshire Hathaway. The conglomerate said it was advised by members of Munger’s family that he peacefully died this morning at a California hospital. He would have turned 100 on New Year’s Day.



“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” Buffett said in a statement.



In addition to being Berkshire vice chairman, Munger was a real estate attorney, chairman and publisher of the Daily Journal Corp., a member of the Costco board, a philanthropist and an architect.



In early 2023, his fortune was estimated at $2.3 billion — a jaw-dropping amount for many people but vastly smaller than Buffett’s unfathomable fortune, which is estimated at more than $100 billion.



During Berkshire’s 2021 annual shareholder meeting, the then-97-year-old Munger apparently inadvertently revealed a well-guarded secret: that Vice Chairman Greg Abel “will keep the culture” after the Buffett era.



Munger, who wore thick glasses, had lost his left eye after complications from cataract surgery in 1980.



Munger was chairman and CEO of Wesco Financial from 1984 to 2011, when Buffett’s Berkshire purchased the remaining shares of the Pasadena, California-based insurance and investment company it did not own.



Buffett credited Munger with broadening his investment strategy from favoring troubled companies at low prices in hopes of getting a profit to focusing on higher-quality but underpriced companies.



An early example of the shift was illustrated in 1972 by Munger’s ability to persuade Buffett to sign off on Berkshire’s purchase of See’s Candies for $25 million even though the California candy maker had annual pretax earnings of only about $4 million. It has since produced more than $2 billion in sales for Berkshire<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/learn-buffetts-sees-candies-deal-173114333.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">.</a>



“He weaned me away from the idea of buying very so-so companies at very cheap prices, knowing that there was some small profit in it, and looking for some really wonderful businesses that we could buy in fair prices,” Buffett told CNBC in May 2016.



Or as Munger put it at the 1998 Berkshire shareholder meeting: “It’s not that much fun to buy a business where you really hope this sucker liquidates before it goes broke.”



Munger was often the straight man to Buffett’s jovial commentaries. “I have nothing to add,” he would say after one of Buffett’s loquacious responses to questions at Berkshire annual meetings in Omaha, Nebraska. But like his friend and colleague, Munger was a font of wisdom in investing, and in life. And like one of his heroes, Benjamin Franklin, Munger’s insight didn’t lack humor.



“I have a friend who says the first rule of fishing is to fish where the fish are. The second rule of fishing is to never forget the first rule. We’ve gotten good at fishing where the fish are,” the then-93-year-old Munger told the thousands of people at Berkshire’s 2017 meeting.



He believed in what he called the “lollapalooza effect,” in which a confluence of factors merged to drive investment psychology.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-son-of-the-heartland"><a></a>A son of the heartland</h2>



Charles Thomas Munger was born in Omaha on Jan. 1, 1924. His father, Alfred, was a lawyer, and his mother, Florence “Toody,”<a href="https://www.economist.com/media/globalexecutive/damn_right_e_02.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> </a>was from an affluent family. Like Warren, Munger worked at Buffett’s grandfather’s grocery store as a youth, but the two future joined-at-the-hip partners didn’t meet until years later.



At 17, Munger left Omaha for the University of Michigan. Two years later, in 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, according to Janet Lowe’s 2003 biography “Damn Right!”



The military sent him to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena to study meteorology. In California, he fell in love with his sister’s roommate at Scripps College, Nancy Huggins, and married her in 1945. Although he never completed his undergraduate degree, Munger graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1948, and the couple moved back to California, where he practiced real estate law. He founded the law firm Munger, Tolles &amp; Olson in 1962 and focused on managing investments at the hedge fund Wheeler, Munger &amp; Co., which he also founded that year.



“I’m proud of being an Omaha boy,” Munger said in a 2017 interview with Dean Scott Derue of the Michigan Ross Business School. “I sometimes use the old saying, ‘They got the boy out of Omaha but they never got Omaha out of the boy.’ All those old-fashioned values — family comes first; be in a position so that you can help others when troubles come; prudent, sensible; moral duty to be reasonable [is] more important than anything else — more important than being rich, more important than being important — an absolute moral duty.”



In California, he partnered with Franklin Otis Booth, a member of the founding family of the Los Angeles Times, in real estate. One of their early developments turned out to be a lucrative condo project on Booth’s grandfather’s property in Pasadena. (Booth, who died in 2008, had been introduced to Buffett by Munger in 1963 and became one of Berkshire’s largest investors.)



“I had five real estate projects,” Munger told Derue. “I did both side by side for a few years, and in a very few years, I had $3 million — $4 million.”



Munger closed the hedge fund in 1975. Three years later, he became vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-we-think-so-much-alike-that-it-s-spooky"><a></a>‘We think so much alike that it’s spooky’</h2>



In 1959, at age 35, Munger returned to Omaha to close his late father’s legal practice. That’s when he was introduced to the then-29-year-old Buffett by one of Buffett’s investor clients. The two hit it off and stayed in contact despite living half a continent away from each other.



“We think so much alike that it’s spooky,” Buffett recalled in an interview with the Omaha World-Herald in 1977. “He’s as smart and as high-grade a guy as I’ve ever run into.”



“We never had an argument in the entire time we’ve known each other, which is almost 60 years now,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in 2018. “Charlie has given me the ultimate gift that a person can give to somebody else. He’s made me a better person than I would have otherwise been. &#8230; He’s given me a lot of good advice over time. &#8230; I’ve lived a better life because of Charlie.”



The melding of the minds focused on value investing, in which stocks are picked because their price appears to be undervalued based on the company’s long-term fundamentals.



“All intelligent investing is value investing — acquiring more than you are paying for,” Munger once said. “You must value the business in order to value the stock.”



But during the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, when Berkshire suffered a massive $50 billion loss in the first quarter, Munger and Buffett were more conservative than they were during the Great Recession, when they invested in U.S. airlines and financials like Bank of America and Goldman Sachs hit hard by that downturn.



“Well, I would say basically we’re like the captain of a ship when the worst typhoon that’s ever happened comes,” Munger told The Wall Street Journal in April 2020. “We just want to get through the typhoon, and we’d rather come out of it with a whole lot of liquidity. We’re not playing, ‘Oh goody, goody, everything’s going to hell, let’s plunge 100% of the reserves’ [into buying businesses].” 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>The philanthropist/architect</h2>



Munger donated hundreds of millions of dollars to educational institutions, including the University of Michigan, Stanford University and Harvard Law School, often with the stipulation that the school accept his building designs, even though he was not formally trained as an architect.



At Los Angeles’ Harvard-Westlake prep school, where Munger had been a board member for decades, he ensured that the girls bathrooms were larger than the boys room during the construction of the science center in the 1990s.



“Any time you go to a football game or a function there’s a huge line outside the women’s bathroom. Who doesn’t know that they pee in a different way than the men?” Munger told The Wall Street Journal in 2019. “What kind of idiot would make the men’s bathroom and the women’s bathroom the same size? The answer is, a normal architect!”



Munger and his wife had three children, daughters Wendy and Molly, and son Teddy, who died of leukemia at age 9. The Mungers divorced in 1953.



Two years later, he married Nancy Barry, whom he met on a blind date at a chicken dinner restaurant. The couple had four children, Charles Jr., Emilie, Barry and Philip. He also was the stepfather to her two other sons, William Harold Borthwick and David Borthwick. The Mungers, who were married 54 years until her death in 2010, contributed $43.5 million to Stanford University to help build the Munger Graduate Residence, which houses 600 law and graduate students.



Asked by CNBC’s Quick in a February 2019 “Squawk Box” interview about the secret to a long and happy life, Munger said the answer “is easy, because it’s so simple.”



“You don’t have a lot of envy, you don’t have a lot of resentment, you don’t overspend your income, you stay cheerful in spite of your troubles. You deal with reliable people and you do what you’re supposed to do. And all these simple rules work so well to make your life better. And they’re so trite,” he said.



“And staying cheerful &#8230; because it’s a wise thing to do. Is that so hard? And can you be cheerful when you’re absolutely mired in deep hatred and resentment? Of course you can’t. So why would you take it on?”



— CNBC’s Yun Li contributed reporting.

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<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="720" height="405" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107332768-1699881235282-gettyimages-1775227723-SHEIN_IPO.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-430663" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107332768-1699881235282-gettyimages-1775227723-SHEIN_IPO.jpeg 720w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107332768-1699881235282-gettyimages-1775227723-SHEIN_IPO-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107332768-1699881235282-gettyimages-1775227723-SHEIN_IPO-160x90.jpeg 160w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A Shein pop-up store inside a Forever 21 store in Times Square in New York on Nov. 10, 2023. Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



Shein has confidentially filed to go public in the U.S. as the Chinese-founded fast-fashion juggernaut looks to expand its global reach with a long-rumored initial public offering, CNBC has learned.&nbsp;



The retailer was last valued at $66 billion and could be ready to start trading on the public markets as soon as 2024, people familiar with the matter said Monday.&nbsp;



It is unclear how much the company is currently worth, but its valuation has been a central point of debate among Shein and the advisors it’s working with, people familiar with the matter said.&nbsp;



A confidential filing is common, as it allows companies to communicate with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and make any necessary adjustments to their filings in private. Over the next few months, Shein will likely make tweaks to its paperwork and answer numerous questions from the agency. The filing will be made public once the company is ready to move forward with its IPO. At that point, those communications with the SEC and any adjustments to its paperwork will be released as well.



Shein has been on a meteoric rise over the past few years after it won over consumers across the globe with its fashion-forward designs, endless assortment and dirt-cheap prices. But Shein has faced a series of challenges along the way and faced accusations of using forced labor in its supply chain, violating labor laws, harming the environment and stealing designs from independent artists.



The company is currently under investigation by the newly formed House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and has faced scrutiny over its ties to Beijing. Numerous lawmakers, including 16 Republican attorneys general, have called on the SEC to ensure Shein isn’t using forced labor in its supply chain before it’s allowed to start trading in the U.S.



In October, Marcelo Claure, the company’s newly minted group vice chair and former SoftBank CEO, told CNBC in an interview that Shein is cooperating with lawmakers and taking time to meet with them to explain the business. He said, “there’s no such thing as forced labor” in the Shein factories that he has visited. But the company has repeatedly acknowledged that forced labor has been found in its supply chain and noted that it’s taking steps to fix it.



As Shein grew from an obscure Chinese retailer into a global behemoth with headquarters in Singapore, it largely stayed in the shadows. It said and did very little publicly until this year, when it began to open up in an apparent attempt to prepare for a U.S. IPO.



With Chinese CEO Sky Xu still at the helm, Shein tapped former Bear Stearns investment banker Donald Tang to be its executive chair and public face earlier this year.&nbsp;It has hosted a series of well-publicized pop-up events, sent influencers to its Chinese factories in a poorly received public relations campaign and courted the business press with splashy parties that featured its independent designers and other friends of the company.



Shein has worked hard to beat the many negative accusations that have come to define the company and has made its executives available for interviews as it worked to change the narrative.



Recently, it acquired about one-third of Sparc Group — a joint venture that includes brand management firm Authentic Brands Group and mall owner Simon Property Group — and in doing so, made a powerful U.S. ally that could help legitimize the company in the eyes of U.S. regulators.



As part of the deal, Shein has partnered up with former rival Forever 21 to unveil a co-branded clothing line that will see Shein design, manufacture and distribute the clothes primarily on its website. Shein has been hosting pop-up events inside of Forever 21′s stores.



Shein still has more work to do before it can win the trust of U.S. regulators. Beyond its myriad of issues, its CEO remains a mysterious figure who doesn’t give interviews or speak publicly about the company. The practice is a major departure from other firms that are publicly traded in the U.S., which regularly make their CEOs available. In October, the company did not tell CNBC whether Xu is still a Chinese citizen.



The company has tapped Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to be the lead underwriters on the offering, the people said. 



Shein declined to comment. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley did not comment.



Earlier Monday, Chinese media reported on Shein’s filing.

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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="547" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-545175688-820x547.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-429762" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-545175688-820x547.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-545175688-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-545175688-135x90.jpg 135w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-545175688-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-545175688.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; JULY 6: Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius holds the hand of a relative after sentencing at the High Court on July 6, 2016 at the High Court in Pretoria, South Africa. Pistorius was sentenced to six years in prison for the murder of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at their home in 2013. (Photo by Marco Longari &#8211; Pool/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure>



<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/oscar-pistorius-murdered-girlfriend-reeva-steenkamp-father-parole-rcna36449" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Oscar Pistorius</a>, the disgraced South African Paralympian who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/blade-runner-oscar-pistorius-charged-murder-flna1c8371215" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">murdered his girlfriend</a>&nbsp;on Valentine’s Day 10 years ago, was granted parole at a hearing on Friday and will be released.



A double amputee sprinter known as the “Blade Runner” for his prosthetic legs, Pistorius, 37, was convicted of fatally shooting his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pistorius-trial/pistorius-i-knew-it-id-fired-four-shots-door-n74446" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">four times through a locked bathroom door</a>&nbsp;at his home in Pretoria in 2013.



Pistorius was told at a hearing in Pretoria, the administrative capital where he has been held, that he will be released on Jan. 5, 2024.



A model and law graduate, Steenkamp was 29. Tania Koen, a lawyer who has represented the Steenkamps throughout the parole process and Pistorius’ appeals, confirmed to NBC News that parole was granted.



Pistorius was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/oscar-pistorius-denied-parole-murder-reeva-steenkamp-rcna77550" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">denied parole at a hearing in March</a> after a judge ruled that, despite expectations that it would be granted, he had not served the minimum time needed to qualify for parole. The judge in that hearing said he wouldn’t be considered for parole until August 2024.



The 2014 trial attracted global attention as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pistorius-trial/pistorius-vomits-court-graphic-images-steenkamps-body-n51591" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">details of Steenkamp’s death</a>&nbsp;were beamed around the world. It immediately ended the career of Pistorius, then perhaps the world’s most high-profile disabled athlete, who made history by competing in an able-bodied field at the Olympics.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Pistorius claimed<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pistorius-trial/oscar-pistorius-my-car-was-shot-dad-was-hijacked-twice-n73506" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;he mistook Steenkamp for a burglar</a>&nbsp;and shot her in error. As a condition of the parole process,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/oscar-pistorius-murdered-girlfriend-reeva-steenkamp-father-parole-rcna36449" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Pistorius met with Steenkamp’s father</a>, Barry, in June 2022. Her family opposed his release because they reject Pistorius’ account of their daughter’s killing.



As Pistorius has not yet served his full sentence of 13 years and five months, he will likely be forced to wear an electronic security tag and be banned from leaving Gauteng Province, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria.



Originally, Pistorius was sentenced to six years in jail for murder, but prosecutors then appealed what they called a “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pistorius-trial/oscar-pistorius-prosecutors-seek-longer-murder-sentence-n817166" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shockingly lenient</a>” punishment and the sentence was increased.



Born with a congenital condition that led to both his legs being amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old, Pistorius became a successful athlete, leading out the South African team at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony. Days later he would become the first double amputee to compete at the Olympics.



The 2014 trial&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pistorius-trial/oscar-pistorius-kept-gun-him-all-time-ex-girlfriend-n46746" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">heard&nbsp;</a>that Pistorius had a gun with him “all the time,” including on his bedside table while he slept. He told the court that he lived in fear of a home invasion and said he had been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pistorius-trial/oscar-pistorius-my-car-was-shot-dad-was-hijacked-twice-n73506" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">followed, shot at and hi-jacked</a>. When he shot Steenkamp he had assumed it was a burglar, he said.&nbsp;

Oscar Pistorius Is Sentenced In The Trial Over The Murder Of Reeva Steenkamp

Oscar Pistorius granted parole, to be released from prison nearly 11 years after murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107337160-1700574941108-gettyimages-1442524552-pd21gi-820x462.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-429701" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107337160-1700574941108-gettyimages-1442524552-pd21gi-820x462.jpeg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107337160-1700574941108-gettyimages-1442524552-pd21gi-300x169.jpeg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107337160-1700574941108-gettyimages-1442524552-pd21gi-160x90.jpeg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107337160-1700574941108-gettyimages-1442524552-pd21gi-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/107337160-1700574941108-gettyimages-1442524552-pd21gi.jpeg 929w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Coal plays a huge role in global electricity generation, but has a significant impact on the environment. Boy_anupong | Moment | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



From Pennsylvania to the north of England, coal mines helped to power the Industrial Revolution, turbocharging the economic growth of countries around the world.



Today, however, the production and use of coal has become a thorny issue, with critics slamming the fossil fuel’s huge impact on the environment.



Organizations like Greenpeace describe coal as “the dirtiest, most polluting way of producing energy.” From the UN Secretary General to the International Energy Agency, talk of phasing out coal is becoming increasingly common.



But the global picture is a complex one. A multitude of factors are in play, not least the desire of some countries, especially those in emerging markets, to use coal as a tool for their own economic development.



As the debate surrounding coal continues, discussions about using it — and the infrastructure linked to it — in the shift to a more sustainable future have become one of the more paradoxical aspects of the energy transition.



In May, U.S. firm Ramaco Resources offered some insight into how coal may have a role to play in the years ahead.



Together with researchers from mining consultancy Weir International and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, it published an independent report containing a technical assessment of rare earth elements, or REE, found at one of its mines in Wyoming.



The findings appear to be significant. “Following eighteen months of extensive core drilling and independent chemical analysis, NETL researchers and Ramaco now believe that the Brook Mine property contains perhaps the largest unconventional deposit of REEs discovered in the United States,” Ramaco said.



Speaking to CNBC’s Kelly Evans on “The Exchange” earlier this month, Ramaco CEO Randall Atkins explained why his firm had bought the site in the first place, and how its plans had changed over time.



“It was a rather large reserve, extremely reasonably priced, and we thought we might make a go of it just as a thermal coal proposition but you know, the world changed rather quickly about 10 years ago,” he said.



“And the idea of deploying capital towards a thermal mine became very unattractive. So our approach was, basically, ‘what else can we do with this stuff?’”



This led the company to “a 10 year odyssey of discovering a variety of other alternative uses of coal.”



With China dominating the supply and refining of rare earths, discoveries like the one in Wyoming could be strategically pivotal as the race to roll out the technologies of tomorrow heats up.



“The majority of REE deposits outside of China are associated with ‘conventional’ mines and found in igneous hard rock deposits, which makes them both difficult and expensive to mine and process,” Ramaco said.



“In contrast, the REEs from the Brook Mine are characterized as “unconventional” because they are largely found in clay strata located above and below the coal seams themselves,” it added.



“It is expected they can be mined using normal surface mining techniques and processed in a more economic and environmental manner than conventional REE mines.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-glimmer-of-hope"><a></a>A glimmer of hope?</h2>



Wyoming is not the only part of the U.S. where coal and rare earth extraction are being looked at. In April, for instance, West Virginia University said its researchers would receive an $8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.



The funding would allow them to carry on with the development and advancement of a “pioneering method to extract and separate rare earth elements and critical minerals from acid mine drainage and coal waste,” it added.



Elsewhere, researchers at Penn State have also been focusing on ways to source rare earths and critical minerals via waste from coal mines.



Across the Atlantic, efforts to repurpose old coal mines so that they can be used for many more years to come have also been taking shape.



In Scotland, researchers have been looking at how the water that’s flooded old, disused mines can be used to provide decarbonized heating to buildings.



Away from coal, other sources of energy also hold potential when it comes to producing by-products crucial to sustainable technologies like EV batteries.



In the southwest of England, Geothermal Engineering Limited recently said lithium would be produced as a by-product of its projects focused on geothermal power generation.



According to the firm, it will be enough lithium to supply roughly 250,000 electric car batteries per year.



“GEL’s primary geothermal business of providing baseload geothermal electricity and heat produces a naturally hot geothermal brine from which lithium can be sustainably extracted onshore in the UK as a by-product,” it said.



Despite promising developments like the ones above, the fact remains that coal continues to play a huge role in electricity generation, accounting for a little over one third globally, according to the IEA.



Nevertheless, finds like the one in Wyoming represent a faint glimmer of hope.



Asked by CNBC if there was the potential for more discoveries of a similar ilk, Ramaco CEO Randall Atkins appeared cautiously optimistic. “I think it’s probably logical to conclude that there would be,” he said.

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