BERKSHIRE HATHWAY LTD.Berkshire Hathaway has a wide array of cash producing businesses which is expertly
used to purchase additional cash-producing entities, including large ownership stakes in American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Wells Fargo, Proctor and Gamble, and Coca-Cola.
Berkshire Hathaway's stock price has had a compound growth rate of 27.5% from 1967 through 2011.
From 1967 through 2011, Berkshire's float grew 22.3% per year from $18.5 million to $58.7 billion. Warren Buffett reinvests this float in to high return investments including wholly owned subsidiaries and marketable securities.
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Finance and financial products Berkshire acquired and storage trailers, chassis, intermodal
piggyback trailers and domestic containers. Clayton's finance business, (loans to manufactured home owners),
earned $206 million down from $526 million in 2007. Loan losses remain 3.6% up from 2.9%.
This includes some of the companies where a Berkshire Hathaway stake is 5% or more of the outstanding stock, as reported in the 2010 annual report. In alphabetical order:
American Express Co. (12.6%) BYD (9.9%) The Coca-Cola Company (8.6%) Kraft Foods (5.6%) Moody's Corporation, owner of Moody's Analytics (12.5%) Munich Re (10.5%)
Wells Fargo (19.0%)
Bonds:As of 2008, Berkshire owns $27 billion in fixed income securities, mainly foreign government bonds and corporate bonds.
Other:In 2003, Pepsi paid Berkshire $10 million to insure against a contest Pepsi held which had a potential 1 billion dollar prize. The prize had a very small chance of being won and it was not won by anyone .
Berkshire made $3.5 billion on its investment in preferred shares of Goldman Sachs .
On November 3, 2009, Berkshire Hathaway announced that, using stock and cash totaling $26 billion, it would acquire the remaining 77.4 percent of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation, parent of BNSF Railway