Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.
What it means
Mistakes that cost money can be forgiven; anything that damages the firm’s good name will not be. Buffett ranks reputation far above profit, and says so in the plainest terms he can.
“A shred” matters: he isn’t talking about big scandals only. Even a small loss of trust counts against you more than a large loss of money.
The context
In 1991 it came out that a Salomon Brothers trader, Paul Mozer, had been submitting false bids to buy more Treasury bonds than any one buyer was allowed. Salomon’s chairman, John Gutfreund, didn’t suspend him straight away when he learned of it, and left the company in August 1991. Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway was Salomon’s largest shareholder, became chairman until the crisis passed. Salomon was later fined $190 million.
As chairman, Buffett testified before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance. He opened by apologising: “The nation has a right to expect its rules and laws to be obeyed. And at Salomon, certain of these were broken.” He then said he had asked every employee “to be his or her own compliance officer,” and to ask whether they would be willing to have any act they were considering appear “on the front page of their local paper, to be read by their spouses, children, and friends.” Those who passed that test, he said, “need not fear my other message to them,” which is this line.
Why it matters
Most of us price money and trust the other way round in the moment: the money is concrete, and the damage to trust feels vague. Buffett’s line flips the order, and it works as well for a family or a small business as for a bank.
His front-page test makes it practical. Before you do something, picture the people you love reading a fair but critical account of it. If you’d be uncomfortable, that’s the shred of reputation at stake.
About Warren Buffett
American investor and philanthropist, born 1930
Warren Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on 30 August 1930. He studied at the University of Nebraska and at Columbia Business School, where he shaped his approach around the value investing of Benjamin Graham. He went on to run Berkshire Hathaway, turning a textile manufacturer into a diversified holding company, and became one of the best-known investors in the world.
In 1987 Berkshire bought a 12% stake in Salomon Inc., making Buffett a director, and in 1991 he became Salomon’s chairman during the Treasury-bid scandal. He has pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune, and in 2010 he founded the Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates.
The source, and how we checked it
It comes from Opening statement to a House subcommittee on the Salomon Treasury-auction scandal, 1991.
We matched the quote word for word against the full text of Buffett's opening statement as The Wall Street Journal printed it in 2010. The Journal's site blocks automated access, so Alfred saved the text for us and confirmed the link opens that article. It doesn't give the exact day of the hearing, so we give the year only. We last checked this on 5 November 2026.