In May 2008, Mitek acquired Hohmann & Barnard, a fabricator of anchors and reinforcement systems for masonry. In February 2001, Berkshire acquired Johns Manville, established in 1858 and a manufacturer of fiberglass wool insulation products for homes and commercial buildings, as well as pipe, duct, and equipment insulation products. In December 2000, Berkshire acquired Benjamin Moore & Co., headquartered in Montvale, New Jersey. In October 1999, Berkshire acquired Jordan’s Furniture for an estimated $200 million to $300 million. In addition to brokerage services, it provides mortgage loan originations, title insurance and closing services, home warranty, property insurance and casualty insurance and other related services. Berkshire paid for the acquisition with Class A shares valued at $58,400 each; Buffett later said he overpaid, despite strong performance by General Re.
Berkshire formed BH Media Group with a purchase of the Omaha World-Herald in December 2011, which included six other daily newspapers and several weeklies across Nebraska and southwest Iowa. Instead of selling at the slightly lower price, Buffett bought more of the stock at an even higher price to take control of the company and fire Stanton; Stanton and his son resigned in 1965. In 1964, Buffett offered to sell his shares back to the company for $11.50 each. Buffett personally owns 38.4% of the Class A voting shares of Berkshire Hathaway, representing a 15.1% overall economic interest in the company. A “file MD5” is a hash that gets computed from the file contents, and is reasonably unique based on that content.
- In July 2005, Berkshire Hathaway acquired Forest River, the world’s largest seller of recreational vehicles, from Pete Liegl for $800 million.
- In April 2002, Berkshire acquired Fruit of the Loom for $835 million in cash.
- In the first quarter of 2016, Berkshire began investing in Apple Inc., with a purchase of 9.8 million shares (0.2% of Apple) worth $1 billion.
- Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company run by Warren Buffett that owns a diverse range of businesses and minority stakes in public companies like Apple.
- Berkshire’s annual shareholders’ meetings, nicknamed «Woodstock for Capitalists», take place at the CHI Health Center Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska.
- Holders of class A stock are allowed to convert their stock to Class B, though not vice versa.
Annual letters and shareholders’ meetings
In the heart of the county Reading’s northern suburb Caversham is also on that bank, but rises steeply into the Chiltern Hills. A flag for the historic county of Berkshire was registered with the Flag Institute in 2017. 94 (Berkshire Yeomanry) Signal Squadron still keep the berkshire hathaway letters to shareholders Uffington White Horse in their insignia, even though the White Horse is now within the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire. The northern part of the county came under governance of Oxfordshire, with Faringdon, Wantage and Abingdon and their hinterland becoming the Vale of White Horse district, and Didcot and Wallingford added to South Oxfordshire district. The administrative county’s full legal name was «Berks» rather than «Berkshire» until 1967, when the government changed the name to Berkshire at the county council’s request. Boundary alterations in the late 19th century and early 20th century were relatively rare, but included ceding the parts of the borough of Oxford south of the Thames in 1889, and gaining Caversham from Oxfordshire in 1911.
Who Is Warren Buffett?
Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company run by Warren Buffett that owns a diverse range of businesses and minority stakes in public companies like Apple. Class A shares of common stock usually give shareholders a greater amount of voting rights than Class B and other classes of stock. In 2018, the company put Ajit Jain in charge of all of the insurance operations and made Greg Abel the manager of all other (noninsurance) operations. Berkshire’s stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange in two classes—A shares and B shares. As of 2025, Berkshire Hathaway had a market capitalization of over $1.05 trillion, making it one of the largest publicly traded companies worldwide. Its class A shares (BRK.A) are among the most expensive in the stock market and trade at over $700,000 dollars per share.
Newbury is home to the world headquarters of the mobile network operator Vodafone, which is the town’s largest employer with over 6,000 people. The European head offices of major IT companies BlackBerry, CA Technologies, are in the town. The heaths and woodland south and east of Bracknell are mostly covered by (Eocene) Bracklesham Group sands and clays, and Quaternary sands, silts and gravels.
Notable people
However, the company also manages hundreds of diverse businesses all over the world. Class A shares have never split and closed above $734,000 per share on October 10th of 2025 (its Class B shares traded at about $489 on the same date). Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company for a multitude of businesses, including GEICO and Fruit of the Loom, that is led by Warren Buffett. Other hockey teams in the county include Tadley, Yateley, Maidenhead, Windsor, and Newbury & Thatcham Hockey Clubs. Phoenix Reading Hockey Club, based at Reading University, has six adult teams and a large junior development section. There are several amateur and semi-professional football clubs in the county.
Share classes and aversion to stock splits
In Compton, a small village, roughly 10 miles from Newbury, a chemical manufacturing company called Carbosynth was founded, in 2006. Before moving to their £129 million headquarters in the outskirts of the town in 2002, Vodafone used 64 buildings spread across the town centre. Manufacturing ceased in 2018 with operations moving elsewhere, however the UK headquarters is still based there. The town is home to the National Foundation for Educational Research, which is housed in The Mere.
Analyzing Berkshire Hathaway’s Investment Approach
- Berkshire is one of the ten largest components of the S&P 500 and is on the list of largest employers in the United States.
- Buffett has long eschewed a diversified stock portfolio in favor of trusted investments that would be over-weighted in order to leverage the anticipated return.
- He focused on selecting stocks that would be held for the long term.
- In the second quarter of 2020, Berkshire added a position of more than 20 million shares in Barrick Gold; the shares were sold in 2021.
The purchase made Berkshire Hathaway the sixth-largest shareholder of Constellation Brands. Berkshire Hathaway bought 5.62 million shares of Constellation Brands in the fourth quarter of 2024, worth $1.24 billion. In the first quarter of 2022, Berkshire acquired a $2.6 billion stake in Paramount Global.
Major stock purchases and sales
As Tesco’s problems mounted through 2014, Berkshire sold all the remaining shares with Buffett saying to shareholders that the delay in selling shares was costly. Buffett sold around 30% of this stake in 2013 when he «soured somewhat on the company’s then-management», realizing a profit of $43 million. Buffett began investing in Wells Fargo in 1989; however, by the first quarter of 2022, Berkshire Hathaway had sold its entire interest in the company. In 2017, Berkshire acquired 38.6% of truck stop chain Pilot Flying J for $2.8 billion, followed by the acquisition of an additional 41.4% of the company for $8.2 billion in 2023, and the remaining 20% in 2024 for $3 billion. In February 2016, Berkshire Hathaway acquired Duracell from Procter & Gamble for $4.7 billion in stock in P&G previously owned by Berkshire Hathaway. In 2012, Berkshire acquired Oriental Trading Company, a direct marketing company for novelty items, small toys, and party items for around $500 million.
Horse racing
In 2019, Applied Underwriters was sold back to its founder for $920 million. Products are produced in the United States and Europe and are sold primarily through a global network of independent dealers and distributors, with peak sales occurring in the second and third quarters. From its headquarters in Addison, Illinois, The Pampered Chef utilizes a network of more than 65,000 independent sales representatives to sell its products through home-based party demonstrations, principally in the United States. In April 2002, Berkshire acquired Fruit of the Loom for $835 million in cash. In February 2002, Berkshire acquired Albecca, headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, operating under the Larson-Juhl name. On April 23, 2010, Mitek acquired the assets of Dur-O-Wal from Dayton Superior.
Berkshire also received warrants to buy 43.5 million shares with at $115 per share, which were exercisable at any time for a five-year term. The preferred stock yielded an annual interest rate of 10%, earning Berkshire $500 million in interest income per year. In September 2008, at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, Berkshire invested $5 billion in preferred stock in Goldman Sachs to provide it with a source of funding when capital markets had become constrained. That year, ConocoPhillips completed the corporate spin-off of Phillips 66, of which Berkshire owned 27 million shares. In early 2008, Berkshire increased its stake in ConocoPhillips to 85 million shares. Berkshire made its first investment in Tesco in 2006, and in 2012 it raised this stake to over 5% of the company, investing a total of $2.3 billion.
In October 2025, Berkshire acquired OxyChem, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, in a $9.7 billion cash deal. As part of the transaction, Berkshire reduced the purchase price of the company by any fees that it paid investment bankers. It appointed two Berkshire Hathaway Energy executives as CEO and CFO of the company, retaining Jimmy Haslam as chairman.
The company owns a variety of well-known businesses, such as GEICO and Fruit of the Loom, and has significant minority interests in public companies such as Apple. Newbury’s rugby union club, Newbury R.F.C. (the Newbury ‘Blues’), is based in the town. Biosynth Carbosynth, along with its acquired companies, vivitide and Pepscan rebranded to Biosynth in 2022.
On August 26, 2011, Berkshire Hathaway bought $5 billion of preferred shares in Bank of America. In October 2008, Berkshire invested $6.5 billion in Wrigley Company as part of a financing package to enable Mars Inc. to acquire the company. Buffett defended Lloyd Blankfein’s decisions as CEO of Goldman Sachs and his efforts to improve the reputation of the company during the 2008 financial crisis. Profit on the preferred stock was estimated at $1.8 billion and exercising the warrants yielded a profit of more than $2 billion. Goldman had the right to re-purchase the preferred stock at a 10% premium, and in March 2011 exercised this right paying $5.5 billion to Berkshire.
Towns and villages
Berkshire sold its remaining bonds and preferred stock to Mars in 2016. Some shares were sold in 2023 and 2024, with Buffett motivated by the China–United States trade war. Berkshire later sold $1.4 billion worth of shares to Phillips 66 in exchange for Phillips Specialty Products. Berkshire sold most of its shares but held 472,000 shares until 2012.
The insurance company Prudential has an administration centre in the town. The proximity of the east of the county to London led to development from the nineteenth century, when Slough became an industrial centre and Bracknell was designated a new town. The south-east of the county contains Swinley Forest, a remnant of Windsor Forest now used as a forestry plantation. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London to the east, Surrey to the south-east, Hampshire to the south, and Wiltshire to the west. The salary for Buffett is $100,000 per year with no stock options, which is among the lowest salaries for CEOs of large companies in the United States. As of June 30, 2025, the company had $344 billion in Treasury bills, which together with its reported cash of $44 billion made up the largest cash position of any U.S.-based public company.
They are the source of the River Kennet, which flows east through Newbury before meeting the Thames at Reading. The county has an area of 1,263 km2 (488 sq mi) and a population of 911,403. Berkshire (/ˈbɑːrkʃɪər, -ʃər/ ⓘ BARK-sheer, -shər; abbreviated Berks.), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a ceremonial county in South East England.