If you could only own one stock...

We had this discussion one the desk at work the other day and some really interesting points came out of it. I throught it would be good to see what some of the people on here think.

The idea is, you are given an amount of money i.e £500,000 (the amount is not really important) and with it you have to buy stocks in one company only and you must hold that position for 30 years.

What company would you buy and why?

Well it wouldn't be your company if its staff waste their time discussing impossible scenarios

PS What did you expect here, an intelligent answer?

berkshire hathaway given he is better at picking stocks than me

If you MUST hold it for 30years I would be looking at survival as my first and only criteria, before dividends and certainly before capital gains. In which case I suppose I would follow the man himself mentioned in gooseman's post and plump for Tesco if we're talking UK companies.

Goldmans. Does that really need an explanation?