Berkshire Hathaway 2009 Annual Report Download - page 16

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Our partner in this operation is Leucadia, run by Joe Steinberg and Ian Cumming, with whom we had a
terrific experience some years back when Berkshire joined with them to purchase Finova, a troubled finance
business. In resolving that situation, Joe and Ian did far more than their share of the work, an arrangement I
always encourage. Naturally, I was delighted when they called me to partner again in the Capmark purchase.
Our first venture was also christened Berkadia. So let’s call this one Son of Berkadia. Someday I’ll be
writing you about Grandson of Berkadia.
Investments
Below we show our common stock investments that at yearend had a market value of more than $1 billion.
12/31/09
Shares Company
Percentage of
Company
Owned Cost * Market
(in millions)
151,610,700 American Express Company ........................ 12.7 $ 1,287 $ 6,143
225,000,000 BYD Company, Ltd. .............................. 9.9 232 1,986
200,000,000 The Coca-Cola Company .......................... 8.6 1,299 11,400
37,711,330 ConocoPhillips .................................. 2.5 2,741 1,926
28,530,467 Johnson & Johnson ............................... 1.0 1,724 1,838
130,272,500 Kraft Foods Inc. ................................. 8.8 4,330 3,541
3,947,554 POSCO ........................................ 5.2 768 2,092
83,128,411 The Procter & Gamble Company .................... 2.9 533 5,040
25,108,967 Sanofi-Aventis .................................. 1.9 2,027 1,979
234,247,373 Tesco plc ....................................... 3.0 1,367 1,620
76,633,426 U.S. Bancorp .................................... 4.0 2,371 1,725
39,037,142 Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. ............................. 1.0 1,893 2,087
334,235,585 Wells Fargo & Company .......................... 6.5 7,394 9,021
Others ......................................... 6,680 8,636
Total Common Stocks Carried at Market .............. $34,646 $59,034
*This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis; GAAP “cost” differs in a few cases because of
write-ups or write-downs that have been required.
In addition, we own positions in non-traded securities of Dow Chemical, General Electric, Goldman
Sachs, Swiss Re and Wrigley with an aggregate cost of $21.1 billion and a carrying value of $26.0 billion. We
purchased these five positions in the last 18 months. Setting aside the significant equity potential they provide us,
these holdings deliver us an aggregate of $2.1 billion annually in dividends and interest. Finally, we owned
76,777,029 shares (22.5%) of BNSF at yearend, which we then carried at $85.78 per share, but which have
subsequently been melded into our purchase of the entire company.
In 2009, our largest sales were in ConocoPhillips, Moody’s, Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson
(sales of the latter occurring after we had built our position earlier in the year). Charlie and I believe that all of
these stocks will likely trade higher in the future. We made some sales early in 2009 to raise cash for our Dow
and Swiss Re purchases and late in the year made other sales in anticipation of our BNSF purchase.
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