Berkshire Hathaway Investment

Berkshire partners believes in creating values “based on successful relationships, hard work, analysis, and the open decision making of all individuals” (Partners) They do not see the acquiring company as just a financial investment but as an investment in a relationship between two living entities. They work hard in collaboration with the acquired firm to do the analysis and research and consult all individuals in both firms regarding the future of the company. They focus on quality over quantity and tend to have a smaller set of deals they think will be successful and devote their resources to conduct in-depth analysis to uncover all necessary information and thorough due diligence for each

Brazos’ investment strategy emphasizes buyouts of mid-size companies that show predictable cash flows, have good management teams in place, have well-developed niche markets, and are located in Texas and the Southwest. This strategy suits its position as a first-time fund because this geographic area is underserved by LBO firms. Additionally, the existence of dependable cash flow and management make it easier to acquire debt financing and increase leverage. GTT offered merits for both sellers and Brazos. It gave sellers a way to cash out if they desired, while allowing them to

The Yale Endowment is known in the financial industry as a pioneer in using a combination of innovative asset allocation and active management to produce impressive long-term performance. In fact, the Endowment produced a 17.8% average annual return, net of fees, in the ten-year period ending June 30, 2007.1 This performance is particularly impressive given that, in recent years, the Endowment portfolio has carried less than a 40% weighting in equities. Instead, under the leadership of Chief Investment Officer Dave Swensen, the Yale Investments Office

Buffett challenges the conventional wisdom regarding diversification. He argues that holding a few good stocks is far more important than spreading funds across a broad number of stocks. It is a fact that investors have been so oversold on diversification that the fear of having too many eggs in one basket has caused them to invest very little into companies about which they thoroughly know and far too much into others about which they know nothing at all. It is a dangerous thing to do as buying a company without sufficient knowledge may turn out to be even more dangerous than having adequate diversification.

Which classification system is available with EQS as a criteria for your screen of equities?

At a young age he had the drive and work ethic to make money. He was influenced to by his father who was a stock broker and bought stock at the age of 11. He finished his M.S. in Economics from Columbia Business School where his studied under Benjamin Graham and Phil Fisher. When working at Benjamin Graham’s partnership, he thought the guidelines of investment were too stringent, he felt there were opportunities for higher profits but company guidelines inhibited potential profits. After leaving Graham partnership, he was involved with 6 partnerships. Warren Buffet went on to organize the sale of his partnerships, ultimately securing his job as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He used his critical thinking skills to build Berkshire Hathaway. One of his abilities is the ability to identify talent and recruitment of talent. Warren Buffet believes that gossiping, lying, breaking agreements, becoming defensive, feeling entitled, and withholding key information slows down the decision making process (Market, 2011). These are the key fundamentals that have made Warren Buffet a success.

The Charles Schwab & Company was founded shortly after the U.S. SEC deregulated brokerage commissions in 1975. The company differentiated itself at the time by becoming a self-service brokerage house that put the power in investor’s hands to make critical decisions while paying up to 75% less than traditional brokerage firms. This established the brand as a trend setter, which it further cemented by becoming a technological leader in 1996 when it introduced an online trading platform. Schwab then began to further cut prices and offer financial services through three different market segments:

Most of his success comes of the fact that Berkshire owns insurance companies and he is able to invest insurance “float” which is the pool of premiums that an insurance company receives and invests, but does not own.

Warren Buffet invoked the substance-over-form concept to justify accounting for the GEICO and General Foods transactions as dividends distributions rather than sales of stock. Do you agree with Buffet that the substance of each of the proportionate redemptions was a dividend and not a sale of stock?

Here, the discussion should shift to an analysis of Berkshire’s general record, its experience with MidAmerican, and its experiences buying equity positions in the Big Four. The general conclusion will be that Buffett has done very well as an investor and as the manager of Berkshire.

In regards to investing in stocks, bonds, currencies, or other investment products, it has always been a normal emotion to be happy when a stock price rose and upset when a stock price fell. Yet for Warren Buffet and his team at Berkshire they welcome these declining prices because of the opportunities it brings. According to Warren Buffet, a true investor would be buying stocks and businesses for their entire life, and “with these intentions, declining prices for businesses benefit us, and rising prices hurt us.” Understanding that the investor is going to be a buyer for eternity an investor should

The sixth point that Mr. Buffett disagreed with is diversification. To be honest, I would like to divide investors into two groups, one is big and the other is small. For a small investor, diversification would undoubtedly cost so much that it is better to concentrate on one or two stocks. Nevertheless, it would be more terrific for a big investor to diversify not only because of reducing the firm-specific risk, but also the market risk by investing stocks with correlation not equal to one. Hence, this statement still remains some questions. Nevertheless, if we look the investments of Berkshire Hathaway, it does diversify its business in insurance, apparel, building products, finance and even flight

The combination of five factors in Yale’s investment philosophy plays an important role to Yale’s successful investment performance. However, among the five factors, the most critical and non-replicable factors are Yale’s ability to identify and invest in inefficient markets and to hire superior managers with aligned incentives; all of which came from expertise and years of experience in the industry. David Swansen’s expertise, in particular, plays a big role.

Warren Buffett utilizes a constant strategy to manage these companies including Berkshire Hathaway by holding shares for a long time. Berkshire Hathaway does not pay any dividends to the shareholders but reinvests surplus instead to maximize the value of the company. Under this strategy, each company is growing constantly and some of them such as GIECO and Nebraska Furniture Mart are the major layer in the industry.

Nevertheless if companies operate in weak markets and fail to create growth and profit the concept of maximization of shareholder wealth is also an opportunity for self-regulation and security against threats for a company. This approach is in particular useful for safeguarding against difficulties arising from wrong or misguided leadership within a corporation. Shareholders of a company have the strongest interest in a company’s success because they often invest a lot of capital in the business and require revenues for their deposit (Moore, 2002). As a matter of fact, they become more