Rich Santulli

Rich Santulli, one of the most dynamic managers I’ve ever met, will solve our revenue/expense problem. He won’t do it, however, in a manner that impairs the quality of the NetJets experience. Both he and I are committed to a level of service, security and safety that can’t be matched by others.

Credit Rich Santulli, along with Mark, for this turnaround. Rich, like many of our managers, has no financial need to work. But you’d never know it. He’s absolutely tireless — monitoring operations, making sales, and traveling the globe to constantly widen the already-enormous lead that NetJets enjoys over its competitors. Today, the value of the fleet we manage is far greater than that managed by our three largest competitors combined.

WARREN BUFFETT: And I didn’t get it all. I love the Australian accent of our gecko, but I didn’t pick up the exact nuances of what you asked. But my guess is you asked about the earnings and operation of NetJets. And NetJets has grown rapidly, and so far, our expenses have grown faster than our revenue. We’ve got the top service in the world. We’ve got, really, the only worldwide service. We have a very strong position, particularly in larger airplanes. But I’d have to tell you that I did not anticipate — I thought we would have economies of scale, to some degree, and so far you can almost argue that we’ve had diseconomies of scale. And our expenses, particularly last year, you know, basically got out of hand. And there are various reasons I could give you for that. All I can tell you is, it’s being addressed. Rich Santulli, who runs that operation, you could not have a better operator. He loves NetJets. He works at it 16 hours a day.