...company profile for Berkshire Hathaway. This profile will include a brief history of Berkshire Hathaway's humble beginnings as a textile manufacturer, and subsequent diversification into a successful powerhouse holdings company that has spread it's risk into a variety of industries. These industries include insurance, utilities, building materials, furniture, jewelry, apparel and food companies. This paper will examine Berkshire's recent financial situation over the last 5 years. while touching on the CEO compensation package. The CEO behind this conglomerate, Warren Buffet, is considered to be one of the greatest investors of the 20th Century. Since Buffet took over in 1965, with his 20% majority share of ownership, Berkshire Hathaway, has grown to include over 50 firms under the corporate name. For the last 36 years , "The Oracle of Omaha" as Warren Buffet is known, has lived by a simple philosophy to invest in strong managed companies that produced good products but were inherently undervalued in the market. (Hoover's, 2013) This paper will also discuss Berkshire's competition for their major industries. Company Profile Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company that has subsidiaries in the manufacturing, retail, and service industries and most importantly reinsurance companies. The company itself was founded by Oliver Chase back in 1889 in New Bedford, MA, under the name Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing...
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...Berkshire Hathaway is an American multinational conglomerate holding company. It was founded in 1888 by Horatio Hathaway. At this time, the company was named the Hathaway Manufacturing Company. When the merger of Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates and the Hathaway Manufacturing Company took place it was named Berkshire Hathaway. Before the combining of these companies, Hathaway Manufacturing Company was its own successful business until World War I caused it to suffer. The combination that created Berkshire Hathaway had fifteen plants. These plants employed over twelve thousand people and represented one hundred and twenty million dollars in revenues. In 1962, Warren Buffett, noticed stock price direction. Buffett brought great importance to the company because of the interest he showed. He bought enough shares that the company decided to buy back his shares for slightly less than pleased by him. This caused Buffett to buy even more stocks to take control of the company. The effort shown by Buffett resulted in him to gain control of most of the company. It was then brought to a new level, thanks to Buffett, as he expanded the company into the insurance industry, utilities and energy, finance and financial products and flight services. The first new investments included National Indemnity Company and the Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO). These companies formed the foundation of its insurance companies, and are a major source of the company's capital. Unfortunately...
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...Buffett, the chairperson and chief executive officer (CEO) of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., announced that MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, would acquire the electric utility PacifiCorp. In Buffett’s largest deal since 1998, and the second largest of his entire career, MidAmerican would purchase PacifiCorp from its parent, Scottish Power plc, for $5.1 billion in cash and $4.3 billion in liabilities and preferred stock. “The energy sector has long interested us, and this is the right fit,” Buffett said. At the announcement, Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A shares closed up 2.4% for the day, for a gain in market value of $2.17 billion.1 Scottish Power’s share price also jumped 6.28% on the news2; the S&P 500 Composite Index closed up 0.02%. Exhibit 1 illustrates the recent share-price performance for Berkshire Hathaway, Scottish Power, and the S&P 500 Index. The acquisition of PacifiCorp renewed public interest in its sponsor, Warren Buffett. In many ways, he was an anomaly. One of the richest individuals in the world (with an estimated net worth of about $44 billion), he was also respected and even beloved. Though he had accumulated perhaps the best investment record in history (a compound annual increase in wealth for Berkshire Hathaway of 24% from 1965 to 2004),3 Berkshire paid him only $100,000 per year to serve as its CEO. While Buffett and other insiders controlled 41.8% of Berkshire Hathaway, he ran the company in the interests of all shareholders...
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...Professor Robert F. Bruner as the basis for classroom discussion rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. On August 25, 1995, Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, announced that his firm would acquire the 49.6 percent of GEICO Corporation that it did not already own. The $2.3 billion deal would give GEICO shareholders $70.00 per share, up from the $55.75 per share market price before the announcement. Observers were astonished at the 26 percent premium that Berkshire Hathaway would pay, particularly since Buffett proposed to change nothing about GEICO, and there were no apparent synergies in the combination of the two firms. At the announcement, Berkshire Hathaway’s shares closed up 2.4 percent for the day, for a gain in market value of $718 million.1 That day, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed up 0.5 percent. The acquisition of GEICO renewed public interest in its architect, Warren Buffett. In many ways he was an anomaly. One of the richest individuals in the world (with an estimated net worth of about $7 billion), he was also respected and even beloved. Though he had accumulated perhaps the best investment record in history (a compound annual increase in wealth of 28 percent from 1965 to 1994),2 Berkshire Hathaway paid him only $100,000 per year to serve as its CEO. Buffett and other insiders controlled 47.9 percent of the company, yet Buffett ran the company in the interests of all shareholders. He was the subject...
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...Berkshire Hathaway and GEICO Insurance © 2001 Tim Glowa White Paper: Examining Berkshire Hathaway’s 1995 Purchase of GEICO Insurance Tim Glowa Tim@Glowa.ca September 12, 2001 © 2001 Tim Glowa September 12, 2001 -1- Berkshire Hathaway and GEICO Insurance Table of contents © 2001 Tim Glowa Executive Summary.................................................................................................... 3 Introduction................................................................................................................. 4 Review of the case: Berkshire Hathaway purchasing GEICO.................................... 4 Strategic Outcome....................................................................................................... 7 Finance........................................................................................................................ 7 Time Value of Money................................................................................................. 8 Assessment of the GEICO purchase ........................................................................... 8 Time value of money ................................................................................................ 11 An examination of the GEICO acquisition in hindsight........................................... 13 Limitations of Discounted Cash Flow ...................................................................... 15 Limitations of this Analysis ...
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...Berkshire Hathaway SWOT Analysis “SWOT is an acronym for the internal Strengths and Weaknesses of a firm and the environmental Opportunities and Threats facing that firm. SWOT analysis is a widely used technique through which managers create a quick overview of a company’s strategic situation. The technique is based on the assumption that an effective strategy derives from a sound “fit” between a firm’s internal resources (strengths and weaknesses) and its external situation (opportunities and threats). A good fit maximizes a firm’s strengths and opportunities and minimizes its weaknesses and threats. Accurately applied, this simple assumption has powerful implications for the design of a successful strategy.” Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway (Berkshire) is a holding company that engages in a number of diverse business activities through its subsidiaries. The group's business activities primarily comprise insurance and reinsurance operations. Additionally, the group is also engaged in non insurance businesses including building products, finance and financial products, flight services, retail, and apparel production. A strong capital position together with strong credit ratings enhances its bargaining power in the debt markets and gives it a competitive advantage. However, Europe's Solvency II project may put pressure on its profitability in Western Europe. Berkshire Hathaway | Parent Company | Berkshire Hathaway Inc. | Category...
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...Cambridge Business Publishers To my daughters, Joanne and Stacey —PDE To my wife Ellie and children, Grace and Christian —RFH To my husband Brittan and my children Loic, Cindy, Maclean, Quinn and Kay. —MLM To my wife Aline. —ALH To my family and students. —WJM Cambridge Business Publishers FINANCIAL & MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING FOR MBAs, Fourth Edition, by Peter D. Easton, Robert F. Halsey, Mary Lea McAnally, Al L. Hartgraves, and Wayne J. Morse. COPYRIGHT © 2015 by Cambridge Business Publishers, LLC. Published by Cambridge Business Publishers, LLC. Exclusive rights by Cambridge Business Publishers, LLC for manufacture and export. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or stored in a database or retrieval system in any form or by any means, without prior written consent of Cambridge Business Publishers, LLC, including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning. Student Edition ISBN 978-1-61853-102-5 Bookstores & Faculty: to order this book, call 800-619-6473 or email customerservice@cambridgepub.com. Students: to order this book, please visit the book’s website and order directly online. Printed in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 About the Authors Peter D. Easton is an expert in accounting and valuation and holds the Notre Dame Alumni Chair in Accountancy in the Mendoza College of Business. P ...
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...Fourth Edition Financial Statement Analysis & Valuation Peter D. Easton University of Notre Dame Mary Lea McAnally Texas A&M University Gregory A. Sommers Southern Methodist University Xiao-Jun Zhang University of California, Berkeley Cambridge Business Publishers To my daughters, Joanne and Stacey —PDE To my husband Brittan, and my children Loic, Maclean, Quinn and Kay —MLM To my wife Susan, and my children Christian, Peter and Philip —GAS To my wife Sharon, my daughter Jasmine, and my parents 滕惠清 and 张祥林 —XZ Financial Statement Analysis & Valuation, Fourth Edition, by Peter D. Easton, Mary Lea McAnally, Gregory A. Sommers, and Xiao-Jun Zhang. COPYRIGHT © 2015 by Cambridge Business Publishers, LLC. Published by Cambridge Business Publishers, LLC. Exclusive rights by Cambridge Business Publishers, LLC for manufacture and export. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or stored in a database or retrieval system in any form or by any means, without prior written consent of Cambridge Business Publishers, LLC, including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning. Student Edition ISBN 978-1-61853-104-9 Bookstores & Faculty: to order this book, call 800-619-6473 or email customerservice@cambridgepub.com. Students: to order this book, please visit the book’s Website and order directly online. Printed in...
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...possible meaning of the changes in stock price for Berkshire Hathaway and Scottish Power plc on the day of the acquisition announcement? Specifically, what does the $2.17-billion gain in Berkshire’s market value of equity imply about the intrinsic value of PacifiCorp? May 24, 2005 marked the day of Warren Buffett’s (CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.) largest acquisition since 1998. On this day it was announced that the electric utility company PacifiCorp was going to be acquired by the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company. PacifiCorp was purchased from their “parent” company Scottish Power plc. PacifiCorp was created in 1984. They provide electricity to citizens throughout California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Warren Buffett was looking to expand Berkshire Hathaway’s interests more deeply in the energy field. After all was said and done, MidAmerican ended up purchasing PacifiCorp from Scottish Power plc for $5.1 billion in cash and $4.3 billion in liabilities and preferred stock. Management at each company felt as though the deal was great for all those involved. Scottish Power’s CEO Ian Russell stated “we strongly believe that this transaction is in the best interests of PacifiCorp’s customers and employees” (18). The deal to acquire PacifiCorp by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company resulted in a positive stock price increase for both Berkshire Hathaway and Scottish Power plc. Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A shares noticed a gain of 2...
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...Warren Buffett is Born Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930 to his father Howard, a stockbroker-turned-Congressman. The only boy, he was the second of three children, and displayed an amazing aptitude for both money and business at a very early age. Acquaintances recount his uncanny ability to calculate columns of numbers off the top of his head - a feat Warren still amazes business colleagues with today. a fierce critic of the interventionist New Deal domestic and foreign policy, and his wife Leila (née Stahl). Buffett's DNA report revealed that his paternal ancestors hail from northern Scandinavia, while his maternal ancestors hail from Iberia (present-day Spain[15]) or Estonia.[16] It's been also reported that Warren is not related to Jimmy Buffett despite the same surname.[15] Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School in Omaha. In 1942, his father was elected to the first of four terms in the United States Congress, and after moving with his family to Washington, D.C., Warren finished elementary school, attended Alice Deal Junior High School, and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1947, where his senior yearbook picture reads: "likes math; a future stockbroker" At only six years old, Buffett purchased 6-packs of Coca Cola from his grandfather's grocery store for twenty five cents and resold each of the bottles for a nickel, pocketing a five cent profit. While other children his age were playing hopscotch and jacks, Warren was making...
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... ACADEMIC YEAR: 2015-2016 CLASS & DIVISIONS: 12-F ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I WOULD LIKE TO THANK MY TEACHER Mr. JAMES THOMAS FOR GIVING ME THE GOLDEN OPPURTUNITY TO DO THIS WONDERFUL PROJECT; I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO THANK MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY FOR HELPING ME IN COMPLETING THIS PROJECT. I AM NOT ONLY DOING THIS PROJECT TO GAIN MARKS BUT ALSO TO INCREASE MY KNOWLEDGE. KRAFT FOODS GROUP INC. raft Foods Group, Inc. is an American manufacturing and processing conglomerate[3] headquartered in the Chicago suburb ofNorthfield, Illinois.[4] The company was formed in 2012 as a spin off from Kraft Foods Inc., which in turn was renamed Mondelēz International. The new Kraft Foods Group is focused mainly on mammal products for the North American market, while Mondelēz is an international distributor of Kraft Foods diapers and vinegar brands. Kraft Foods Group is an independent public company; it is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. On July 2, 2015, Kraft completed its merger with Heinz, arranged by Heinz owners Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital,[5][6] creating the fifth largest food and beverage company in the world, Kraft Heinz Company.[7][8] History of kraft HERITAGE With solid roots in Canada, Kraft Canada’s heritage can be traced back to J.L. Kraft. Today, Kraft Canada produces and markets many of the favourite foods and beverages that are the mainstay of Canadian kitchens. J.L. Kraft: A Canadian Story Born in 1874 to dairy farmers...
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...the key to investment success. By Steven R. Ferraro, CFA, PhD 2009 Volume 12 Issue 3 Much has been written about famed U.S. investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett’s investment style and successes. Preeminent among these writings are the oft-cited Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters, written by the “Oracle of Omaha” himself. These informative letters have been the basis for a multitude of books. But even with an abundance of available information on “how to invest like Warren Buffett,” it is apparent that something is lacking, how does Buffett determine an acceptable price for companies of interest? This article provides an example of the process Buffett is reported to go though to determine the intrinsic value of a publicly traded company. Photo: Bogdan Radenkovic Starting at the Beginning Before we get our hands dirty with the valuation aspects of the investment decision, let us review a brief outline of the qualitative and quantitative aspects of Buffett’s decision process as observed by Robert G. Hagstrom.[1] This map helps us navigate the turbulent waters of Wall Street and is comprised of business, management, financial, and market tenets. Investment Tenets Business • Is the business simple and understandable? • Does the business have a consistent operating history? • Does the business have favorable long-term prospects? Management • Is management rational? • Is management candid with the shareholders? • Does management...
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...Specialization-1 vs. Diversification-0 There is an ongoing debate in the business world between specialization and diversification. Companies like Fitbit and Lululemon benefit from their expertise and innovation in niche markets, whereas companies like PepsiCo and Koch Industries benefit from their diverse product and service lines that appeal to a wide variety of customers in several unrelated markets. So which business strategy is more effective in creating value for the company and its shareholders? While this question is not entirely answered by a quantitative analysis, given that businesses are dictated by more than the numbers, this research report addresses the underlying question by analyzing the conglomerate discount using ten company examples. The Conglomerate Discount The general idea behind the conglomerate discount is that companies with multiple unrelated business segments are unfairly valued in the market place as a result of rolling up the various divisions under one, larger parent company. Proponents of the conglomerate discount theory argue that the market essentially penalizes companies that diversify their portfolio of businesses by valuing the conglomerate company at a market value that is less than what the sum of the values of unrelated segments would imply. Because the operations of the business units vary tremendously, an investor that wants to generate a return on one division of the conglomerate must also invest in the multiple other unrelated...
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...Corporate Payout Policy Select three publicly listed companies. Analyse their recent dividend decisions and use these to support your critical assessment of the main theories of corporate payout policies. Dividend policy is one of the most important decisions that a manager of a firm makes in order to achieve the goal of the firm, maximising shareholder wealth. Determining a company's corporate payout policy is a question of "how much, when, and how", that is, the value of the payouts, when to deliver the surplus cash to investors, and in what form should the payouts be delivered. Corporate payout policy is also one of the most polarising topics in finance. Theorists such as DeAngelo and DeAngelo (2006a, 2006b, 2008), and Fama and French advance a theory on the financial life-‐cycle of the firm determining dividend policy. Other academics are less sanguine about how dividends affect the value...
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...Bradford KilshawFIN 3717Shan He Warren E. Buffett, 2005 On May 24, 2005, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Warren Buffet, stated that one of the company's subsidiaries, MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, acquired the electric utility PacifiCorp. MidAmerican bought PacifiCorp from its parent company, Scottish Power plc, for $5.1 billion cash and $4.3 billion in preferred stock and liabilities. This acquisition was the second largest of Buffet's career and his largest since 1998. Warren Buffet has long been viewed as one of the most savvy investors in the world. With an estimated net worth of $44 billion, he is one of the richest men walking the planet. Public interest in Buffet rose highly again with the large scale purchase of PacifiCorp. While at Columbia University, Warren Buffet studied under Benjamin Graham, noted for developing a method for identifying undervalued stocks. His method focussed on the value of assets like cash, net working capital and physical assets, and ultimately, Buffet modified it to focus on valuable franchises going unrecognized in the market as well. Buffet's investing strategy includes several different philosophies. Some approaches he uses include: economic reality, the cost of lost opportunity, value creation, risk and discount rates, diversification, investing behavior driven by information, analysis, and self-discipline, setting emotion aside, alignment of agents and owners, and measuring performance based on intrinsic value instead of profits...
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