Alice Schroeder

Bloomberg News columnist, BusinessWeek contributing writer, and former regulator, CPA and Wall Street analyst Alice Schroeder is the author of the 1 bestseller The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, which spent four months on the New York Times bestsellers list. The Snowball was named Amazon’s 1 Top Business and Investing Book of the year. New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin called it one of her ten favorite books of 2008. Both TIME and People magazines named The Snowball one of the ten best books of the year, among other accolades.

Ms. Schroeder began her career as an auditor in the Houston office of Ernst & Young. After a stint in the firm’s the national headquarters, she joined the Financial Standards Accounting Board, where she drafted some of the most significant accounting standards affecting the insurance industry, FAS 113 and EITF Consensus Positions 93-6 and 93-14. Rather than take the typical route into industry after the FASB, Schroeder joined Dowling Partners, a boutique investment banking firm in Boston. Schroeder next became a managing director at first Oppenheimer & Co., then PaineWebber, where she was voted by clients a member of the Institutional Investor  All-America Research team in recognition of her property-casualty insurance research.

In 1998 Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway acquired General Reinsurance, a company whose stock Schroeder followed. Buffett, generally dismissive of analysts, and of Wall Street in general, asked Schroeder to “do him a favor” by becoming the only analyst with whom he would speak. Her January, 1999 report on Berkshire became a best-seller for PaineWebber and launched a new valuation method for BRK that is used by many investors today.

In 2000 Schroeder joined Morgan Stanley, where she became a Managing Director and Institutional Investor’s top-ranked property-casualty insurance analyst. In addition to Berkshire Hathaway, Schroeder published a popular newsletter and was known for her coverage of insurance giant AIG, tough calls on stocks, hard-hitting industry coverage, and perspective on terrorism’s impact on the insurance industry following the 9/11 attacks. In the winter of 2002-3 Schroeder was named Analyst/Researcher of the Year by The Review magazine, one of “40 People to Watch” by A.M. Best, and one of “35 Rising Stars” by Business Insurance magazine.

Early in 2003 Schroeder went on leave from Morgan Stanley and began what would become five years of research and writing for the ultimate analysis – of Warren Buffett, for what became The Snowball. Granted unparalleled access by Buffett to his papers, family and unlimited time for interviews and questions, Schroeder gives a never-before seen look at Buffett’s upbringing and early history and a fine-grained level of detail of his relationships, investing and philanthropy.

Her editorials and articles have appeared in such publications as The Washington Post, Bloomberg News, BusinessWeek, and The Huffington Post. She has appeared on The Today Show, Bloomberg's Taking Stock, Nightly Business Report, ABC World News Tonight and various programs on CNBC, CNN, NPR, the BBC and Fox Business.

A native of Texas, Schroeder lives in Connecticut with her husband David Moyer and their two trained therapy dogs. She currently is working on two books: an investing book that will reveal for the first time exactly how Warren Buffett selected his investments and got rich; and another book on “adaptive entrepreneurship" for "the new normal" following the financial crisis and great recession.