Lehtikuva/Vesa Moilanen/Reuters
- Warren Buffett's business partner, Charlie Munger, mocked Al Gore's intelligence in 2017.
- Gore's Generation firm and Munger's Daily Journal both invested in Alibaba last quarter.
- Generation and Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway both added Aon to their stock portfolios.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Warren Buffett's right-hand man, Charlie Munger, once called Al Gore an "idiot" and "not very smart." The former US vice-president's investment firm bought the same two stocks that Buffett and Munger added to their portfolios last quarter.
Generation Investment Management, which Gore cofounded and chairs, boosted its stake in Alibaba by 94% to almost 3 million shares in the three months to March 31, regulatory filings show.
Daily Journal, a newspaper publisher that boasts Munger as its chairman and stock picker, established a stake in the Chinese e-commerce group last quarter as well. Alibaba was its only new position in the period.
Generation also invested in Aon in the first quarter. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, which counts Munger as its vice-chairman, bought into the professional-services firm too – the only new addition to its portfolio.
It's also worth noting Gore sits on the board of Apple, Berkshire's biggest holding and one of its most lucrative bets ever.
Munger disparaged Gore's intelligence at Daily Journal's annual meeting in 2017, according to GuruFocus. He wanted to underscore how surprising it was that Gore had made hundreds of millions of dollars from investing.
Gore, who starred in an "An Inconvenient Truth" and won a Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness of the climate crisis, simply refused to invest in carbon-intensive companies, and partnered with a skilled value investor named David Blood. The upshot was that Generation invested in software and service companies such as Microsoft and delivered stellar returns, Munger said.
Generation's long-term, sustainable investing approach has resulted in it owning billion-dollar stakes in Google-parent Alphabet, Cisco, Equifax, Charles Schwab, and Baxter International.