Sir Philip Green and Warren Buffett — the permanently tanned, ostentatious rag-trade entrepreneur and the soft-spoken, frugal Sage of Omaha — could not be more different.

菲利浦•格林爵士(Sir Philip Green)与沃伦•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)在各方面可谓都大相径庭——一位是皮肤黝黑、爱炫耀的成衣贸易企业家，另一位是温和、节俭的“奥马哈圣人(Sage of Omaha)”。

Yet they share a fierce desire to protect their reputations and bear the scars of having held on to certain investments for too long.

然而，两人都有维护自己声誉的强烈欲望，也都带着持有某些投资过久的伤痕。

When Mr Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 it was an ailing owner of textile mills in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Now, it is best known as a highly successful listed holding company. For two decades, though, the declining mills were a thorn in his side that he refused to excise.

巴菲特1965年接管伯克希尔哈撒韦公司(Berkshire Hathaway)时，后者只拥有马萨诸塞州新贝德福德几家陷入困境的纺织厂。如今，伯克希尔哈撒韦公司以一家极为成功的上市控股公司闻名于世。然而在长达20年期间，这几家濒临破产的纺织厂曾一直是巴菲特不愿丢掉的包袱。

Sir Philip’s purchase and turnround of BHS in 2000 confirmed his talent as an entrepreneur and owner, but as he told me and my colleague Andrea Felsted last year, a few months after finally offloading the BHS stores to a consortium of little-known buyers for ￡1: “I wish I’d have sold it a long, long time back … I should have sold it, but didn’t.”

格林爵士2000年收购了零售集团BHS，使之扭亏为盈，这证明了他作为一名企业家和老板的天赋，但他在去年接受我与同事安德烈•费尔斯特德(Andrea Felsted)采访时——那是在他以1英镑的价格最终将BHS连锁店转给一个由几家不知名买家组成的财团几个月后——表示：“我希望本可以早就把它卖掉……我本应卖掉，但是我没有。”

Reputational risk motivated both investors. Sir Philip’s words may ring hollow for BHS’s 11,000 staff now it is tumbling into administration, but he told us he had been reluctant to cut his longstanding ties to the business: “At the end of the day, I’ve got people here who have been with me from the beginning … I don’t want to just close the door. You do your best to ensure that the people there are OK.”

声誉风险是激励这两位投资者的动力。对正在进入破产管理程序的BHS连锁店的1.1万名员工而言，格林爵士的话听起来或许有些空洞，但他告诉我们，他本不愿切断与BHS之间的长期纽带：“归根结底，我身边有从一开始就跟着我的人……我不想只是把门关上。我要尽全力确保大家过得不错。”

Mr Buffett, who had been appalled by the adverse reaction when he quit an earlier investment in a Nebraska windmill manufacturer, was afraid of the local backlash that might occur if he closed Berkshire down with the loss of jobs. Justifying his continued ownership of the textile mills to his partners in 1969, he wrote: “I have no desire to trade severe human dislocations for a few percentage points [of] additional return per annum.”

当年，对之前退出内布拉斯加一家风车制造商所引发的负面反应感到惊愕的巴菲特，担心关闭伯克希尔的纺织厂会造成工人失业，引发当地反弹。1969年，为了向合伙人证明继续持有这些纺织厂的合理性，他写道：“我不想用严重的社会混乱换取每年几个百分点的额外回报。”

Nevertheless, in 1985, he finally had to close the last remnants of the original Berkshire, granting the 400 workers he laid off only “a couple of months’ extra pay”, according to The Snowball, Alice Schroeder’s biography. Spending 20 years trying to revive the business was one of his biggest mistakes, he admitted in 2001, even though by the time he sold it, it was, in Ms Schroeder’s words, “a flyspeck” on the holding company.

然而，根据爱丽丝•施罗德(Alice Schroeder)所著的巴菲特传记《滚雪球》(The Snowball)一书，1985年，他最终不得不关闭了原伯克希尔公司旗下最后几家工厂，并且只给被裁员的400名工人“两个月的额外报酬”。他在2001年承认，用20年时间试图重振纺织业务是他最大的错误之一，尽管在施罗德的笔下，在他最终将其出售时，这些纺织厂只是这家控股公司的“一个小不点”。

Since those early days, Mr Buffett’s fear of public opprobrium has led him on the whole, to choose discretion over publicity, and to promote an avuncular niceness. The policy has turned him into an acceptable face of capitalism.

从早期开始，巴菲特对公众指责的恐惧让他总体而言选择谨慎（而不是曝光），并展现自己慈祥美好的一面。这一策略将他打造成了一位受到社会认同的资本主义代言人。

Sir Philip’s well-publicised tabloid lifestyle and belligerent relationship with the press have instead made him a high-profile hate figure. Mr Buffett is probably not as angelic as he is portrayed; Sir Philip is probably not as diabolical. But there are lessons there for would-be billionaires everywhere.

格林爵士经常见诸小报的张扬生活方式及其与媒体间剑拔弩张的关系，使他成为一个引人注目的憎恨对象。巴菲特或许并不像其被描绘得那般善良；格林爵士也并非媒体宣称得那么道德败坏。但世界各地的准亿万富翁们都可以从他们身上吸取经验。