Berkshire Hathaway is one of the leading American organizations. The company’s expansion is into different industries serving the varying needs of the customers. Of-late the company was in the news to have 78% of the portfolio in stocks of Apple, BofA, Coca-cola, American express, and Kraft Heinz.
Introduction:
- The company is located in Nebraska, USA
- Its origin story goes back to 1839
- Oliver Chace founded the textile manufacturing company in that year, as Valley Falls
- The same company united with Berkshire cotton manufacturing in the year 1929
- Warren Buffet, bought the stocks of Berkshire Hathaway in 1960s
- Buffalo Evening News founded in the year 1873, was taken over by Berkshire in 1977
- The company was exposed to the insurance sector from 1967 and later on with the acquisition of the National Indemnity
- In the year 1989, it invested in US Airways
- In the year 1996, the company took over the aviation training company FlightSafety International Inc.
- In the year 1998, the company took over General Re
- In 2000, the organization acquired the Acme Building Brands
- The organization acquired the Pampered Chef, by the year 2002
- The same year the company took over Albecca Inc.
- It acquired the Russell Corporation in 2006
- Later the company also invested in Tesco the same year
- In 2007, the company took over the Marmon Group
- In the year 2008, the company selectively invested in the financial giant, Goldman Sachs
- The same year the company acquired stocks of GE and others for a sum of $14.5 billion
- In 2011, the company announced that Ted Weschler would be another investment manager
- In the same year, it invested $5 billion in BofA
- Again in 2011, it took over Lubrizol Corporation
- In 2012, it announced they would be taking over the Oriental Trading company
- In 2014, the company stated of taking over Duracell
- By 2016, it was observed, Warren Buffet had 31.7% voting power in the company’s shares
- 4% of the share is held by the company owned by Melinda Gates
- In 2017, the company made an investment of $400 million in Home Capital Group
- In 2018, Greg Abel, got the new role of Vice-Chairman in the company
- The same year it was ranked third in the Fortune 500 ranking in terms of the revenue earned by the organization.
- The company’s earnings rose to US$84.1 billion by the year 2019
- Almost 90% of the Berkshire Energy is held by the organization
- The Forbes Global 2000 listed out the conglomerate as the eighth largest public company across different countries.
Berkshire Annual Shareholder Meeting:
- The next Berkshire annual shareholder meeting is scheduled on 1st May, 2021
- The 2020 meeting that was held on 4th May, had the live-streaming format
- Buffett discussed why he didn’t invest in a big project for long
- He stated the best thing during this pandemic is to possess S&P 500 Index Fund
Where Berkshire Hathaway Stands Today?
- It has now more than 60 companies under the brand and as per a recent report in August 2020, the conglomerate’s Class B stock is one of the biggest components in the S&P 500 Index.
- The company’s class A shares were sold for $339,188 in the beginning month of 2020. It even sold all the US Airlines shares recently, due to the pandemic.
