If you really want to get some insights into what’s going on in the insurance world, we suggest you get seven friends to join you in bidding for lunch with legendary industry investor Warren Buffett. The advice won’t come cheap, however.

A bidder at a San Francisco auction has paid $US250,000 ($AU380,000) to take seven friends to lunch with Mr Buffett. The legendary investor, who is reportedly negotiating to buy a stake in ailing German insurer Gerling, owns General Re Corp, the largest US reinsurer, through his Berkshire Hathaway investment company.

He agreed for the third year in a row to auction himself to raise funds for a charity supporting San Francisco’s poor, hungry and homeless. Mr Buffett, whose personal fortune is estimated at $46 billion, will lunch with the successful bidder and seven friends in New York next May. If the bidder wants to make it earlier, he will have to bring his friends to Mr Buffett’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.

Previous Buffett lunches sold for a paltry $37,800 and $48,400. That wouldn’t even buy one Berkshire Hathaway share. They’re listed on the New York Stock Exchange at $110,775 each.