Buffetted: Weschler to invest for Warren's shareholders

An owner of the Hook is Omaha-bound. And this isn't a baseball story.

Ted Weschler, 50, until now a quiet giant in the hedge fund world, has been hired as part of a new generation of talent to run key investments for Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the publicly-traded company best known as the brainchild of legendarily-savvy investor Warren Buffett.

Earlier this year, when discussing the first little-known member of the two- or three-member investment team that will eventually replace him, octogenarian Buffett noted that the goal was finding "a 2-year-old Secretariat, not a 10-year-old Seabiscuit."

This reporter has long known that Weschler is a Buffett fan but had no idea about the hiring– or about the $5 million worth of meetings that led to it. The series of curious events are detailed in a story in Fortune.

"It's an incredible accomplishment," says Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel. "I would liken it to a good college quarterback all of a sudden being picked by the Superbowl team."

In Charlottesville, where Weschler will continue to live part time, according to Fortune, Weschler has created a highly successful fund called Peninsula Capital by taking large positions in a select few firms and occasionally getting involved in corporate affairs. That's a direct contrast to his investment in the Hook and in its sister publication C-ville Weekly, where Weschler confines his role to raising capital and convening quarterly meetings.

Weschler declined comment on the news, and reaction from shareholders was muted.

Weschler is a frequent, usually anonymous, donor to local charities (which do not include the Hook), and his political contributions go into both Republican and Democratic war chests. According to Fortune, which examined federal filings, Weschler has earned an incredible return for his investors–- over 1236 percent since the year 2000– who will soon have to find somewhere else to supercharge their money.

"Ted's style of holding a limited number of concentrated positions for a long time," says Tuz, "meshes well with what Warren Buffett has tried to do."

–story updated 2:26pm with quotations