Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-06-29)

F I N A N C E

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Edited by

Pat Regnier

○ Buffett’s

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What Is Berkshire

Anyway

PHOTO

ILLUSTRATION

731;

PHOTO:

DANIEL

ZUCHNIK/WIREIMAGE

Bloomberg Businessweek June 29, 2020

al

r. It’s

rentnow

of businesses from the railroad

BNSF to auto insurer Geico to

Dairy Queen to party goods sup-

plier Oriental Trading. It also holds

a portfolio of substantial investments

in public companies such as Apple Inc.

and Wells Fargo & Co. The sheer diversity

of the businesses has caused investors to con-

sider the company similar to a mutual fund.

Individual investors who might not otherwise con-

sider themselves stockpickers sometimes plunge a

significant chunk of their net worth into this one

company. Hordes of them show up to Berkshire’s

celebrated annual meeting in Omaha each year to

find out what the greatest investor of his genera-

tion is planning to do with their money.

Warren Buffett has likened it to a forest, laid out

its building blocks, and even tried to break it

down into different groups to explain the setup.

But his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has always defied

neat categorization.

Constructed from the remains of a New

England textile company, Berkshire is a mashup