In 20 years Charlie will be 107 and Buffett thinks he will still not understand what causes a man to voluntarily give $12.5M without credit and then 10 years later, buy a stock before he talked to Warren about it.
I don't find this as completely unexplainable as Warren & Charlie do. Sokol didn't just give the incentive back to BRK, he transferred it to his partner so that they became equals. If we presume that he needed Abel's help to pull it off and the bonus was all or nothing and that Abel was going to know the bonus structure for both of them and would know that Sokol defferred his part back to Abel so that they were both equals...then it all makes perfect sense. Abel is now much more highly motivated, not only because his bonus is higher (which is really a small factor in motivating), but also because his boss just showed him generosity so that now he's not just working for himself, but also for Sokol to pay back that generosity, and that's what is really going to motivate him to do his best. I find the move brilliant in terms of motivating your charge and Buffett should recogonize this because in the past he has shown some of the same brilliance.
As far as why he did what he did with LZ, I would theorize that was either a massive brain fart where he simply didn't see himself as trading on inside information because he was buying and recommending it to Warren for the same fundamental value based reasons or he wanted to leave and this was a way to do it. Both are far fetched, but I don't know the guy and there don't seem to be many other explanations.
