Warren Buffett, who amassed the world's third-biggest personal fortune through decades of stock picks and takeovers, told CNBC his worst investment was the textile mill that gave its name to Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

The worst stock he “ever bought was, drum roll here, Berkshire Hathaway,” Buffett, Berkshire's 80-year-old chairman and chief executive officer, said in an interview broadcast today on the business-news channel.

He calls his 1964 decision to buy the textile company a $200 billion blunder, sparked by a spiteful urge to retaliate against the CEO who tried to "chisel" Buffett out of an eighth of a point on a tender deal.

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Buffett had “committed a major amount of money to a terrible business.”

Buffett and his investment partners paid about $14 million in the 1960s for a controlling interest in Berkshire Hathaway, then a New Bedford, Massachusetts-based manufacturer of men's suit linings, according to biographer Andrew Kilpatrick.

Buffett spent less than rivals on improvements to equipment and used Berkshire's earnings to help fund investments, including the 1967 acquisition of insurer National Indemnity Co.