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Ajit Jain

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Ajit Jain (born, July 23, 1951 in Orissa, India) is a businessman who currently heads several reinsurance businesses for Berkshire Hathaway[1] and has been touted as a possible successor to Warren Buffett.[2]

Early life

Ajit Jain was raised in India's coastal state of Orissa. He graduated in 1972 from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur with a bachelor's degree in engineering. He didn't take his studies very seriously, according to classmate Ronojoy Dutta. Instead, they spent hours talking about economics, sociology and the Vietnam War, often debating through the night. Vijay Trehan, another classmate, described Jain and Dutta as "class clowns in our mechanical engineering class." But considering their later careers, Trehan said, "The lesson has to be that 'not taking life too seriously' is definitely the way to go."[3] Another classmate Ravi Ghai recalls that the most notable thing about Jain was his robust sense of humor and mischief.

Career

Jain worked for IBM in India from 1973 to 1976, then moved to the United States, where he earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1978. He joined McKinsey & Co., but returned to India in the early 1980s. After a monthlong courtship, he married Tinku Jain, a girl chosen by his parents. Then he went back to the United States to work for McKinsey. According to Robert P. Miles' book The Warren Buffett CEO: Secrets from the Berkshire Hathaway Managers Jain said he would not have returned to America, but his wife wanted to move there.[4] In 1986 he left McKinsey to work on insurance operations for Buffett. At the time, he said he knew little about the insurance business.[3]

Further reading

  • Miles, Robert P., "The Warren Buffett CEO: Secrets from the Berkshire Hathaway Managers," John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2003.

References

  1. ^ "Warren Buffett testing Indian market". Rediff. 2003-06-27. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
  2. ^ Stempel, Jonathan (2006-03-05). "Warren Buffett finds, but doesn't name, successor". Retrieved 2007-03-24.
  3. ^ a b Urban, Rob (2002-07-11). "Jain, Buffett Pupil, Boosts Berkshire Cash as Succession Looms". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 2006-07-23.
  4. ^ "Ajit Jain: Berkshire's next Oracle?". Rediff India Abroad. 2009-03-06. Retrieved 2010-05-15.

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