Buffett's star pick remains mysterious

Todd Combs, the Sarasota native recently hired by Warren Buffett to manage a large portion of investments at Berkshire Hathaway, has quickly developed an elusive reputation.

Combs shunned interviews from the day he was hired, even with the likes of the Wall Street Journal. For a few days, the only picture that circulated of Combs, 39, was one from his Riverview High School yearbook.

But a freelance photographer, using sources and persistence, spotted Combs Nov. 1 at an ice skating rink near the hedge fund manager's Darien, Conn. home. The photographer, J. Gregory Raymond, approached Combs and was able to take 50 pictures, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg News bought the photos.
Combs, however, still hasn't granted interviews. Even people he knows in Sarasota, including his parents, have spoken little to the media.

The barebones bio of Combs: He graduated from Florida State University and one of his first jobs after college was in the insurance rates department at Progressive Insurance.

Combs launched his hedge fund, Greenwich, Conn.-based Castle Point Capital, in 2005. Castle Point has about $400 million in assets, mostly from financial-services firms — a tiny sum compared to the $100 billion Combs will be investing for Buffet's firm.

Still, this being the age of the Internet, Combs won't be able to stay totally behind the scenes forever. For example, one of Combs' childhood friends, a founder of an Internet search engine optimization firm in Jacksonville, recently posted a blog entry about growing up with Combs in Sarasota. The friend, Michael Turner, recalled bike rides and go-cart races with Combs and other neighborhood kids in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“Todd was smart...and we all knew it,” Turner wrote. “I remember going to his house all the time to play only to have his mom tell me that he couldn't come out to play until his homework was done and he finished practicing Karate.”

Turner, in an ongoing theme, declined to be interviewed by the Review.